He Crashed Into a Convenience Store With a Knife and Golf Club—What Was He Like at Home?

“Call the police!”

After crashing his passenger car into the convenience store, the 45-year-old man reportedly walked around inside the store shouting this, carrying a 15-centimeter-long kitchen knife in his left hand and a golf club in his right.

“At around 12:10 a.m. on July 20, a convenience store employee in Kuzawa, Chuo Ward, Sagamihara City, called 110 and reported, ‘A car has crashed into the store, and the man who was driving is carrying a knife.’ Police officers who arrived at the scene found 45-year-old suspect Kyohei Shibuya in the store’s parking lot carrying a knife. They tried to persuade him to put it down, but when he approached them, a police officer in his 20s fired a warning shot into the air. Shibuya was subsequently restrained and arrested on the spot on suspicion of violating the Swords and Firearms Control Law,” said a reporter from the social affairs department of a national newspaper.

At the time of the incident, there was one employee and two customers inside the store. When the car crashed into the building, a 15-year-old male high school student who was a customer reportedly suffered minor injuries to his arm and other parts of his body.

Shibuya lived in an apartment building across from the convenience store. A man in his 50s who lived in the same building recalled what happened that day.

“I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a loud bang and someone shouting angrily. I thought maybe some young people were making a racket, so I looked outside and saw two police officers pointing their guns at a man and telling him, ‘Drop it.’ The man was carrying something long and silver over his shoulder. I thought it was a Japanese sword, but when I saw the reports, it turned out to be a golf club. Before long, two or three police cars arrived, and more and more officers gathered. I thought he would be arrested soon.”

However, that was not the end of the incident. Shibuya told police that he had set fire to his home. The aforementioned man in his 50s continued:

“At around 2 a.m., we were told over a loudspeaker from outside, ‘The apartment is on fire, so please evacuate immediately,’ and we were made to wait in the parking lot of the supermarket across the street. Firefighters broke through the partition from the balcony of the neighboring apartment and entered Shibuya’s unit. The moment they broke the window, I could see smoke billowing out. But they didn’t spray any water or anything.

“What was strange was that every apartment had a fire alarm, and it had only just been inspected in May, yet none of them went off.”

In fact, some residents said they had been asleep without noticing the fire and found out about it on the news the next day.

Something strange on the morning of the incident

What kind of person was suspect Kyohei Shibuya?

When asked about him, residents of the same apartment building said he was a quiet-looking man who moved here about a year ago and that there had been nothing particularly unusual about him. However, a man who lived directly above Shibuya’s apartment prefaced his account by saying, “I don’t know if it was actually Shibuya.” before telling me the following:

“Around January or February this year, in the middle of winter, my intercom suddenly rang late at night. I asked who it was, but he wouldn’t identify himself. Then, out of nowhere, he said, ‘You’re going out onto the balcony in groups and peeking into my place, aren’t you?’

Even when I asked, ‘What do you mean?’, he wouldn’t give me a proper answer. He just kept insisting, ‘I know you’re all peeking in and making a racket.’ I thought he was dangerous, so I didn’t open the door.

Come to think of it, around September last year, the police also came and said, ‘We received a complaint about excessive noise, so we’d like to ask you some questions.’ Maybe that was also because of the apartment downstairs—Shibuya’s.”

There was also something concerning that happened on the morning of the incident.

“I heard a loud banging from downstairs, as if someone was striking the ceiling hard. It was right around the kitchen, so I wondered if he was trying to break the fire alarm. On the day of the fire, the fire alarm hadn’t gone off.”

On July 21, Shibuya was transferred to prosecutors. At around 8 a.m., he appeared at the prisoner transfer entrance of Hadano Police Station. He briefly gave the cameras what looked like a sharp glare, but immediately lowered his head and boarded the transport vehicle, repeatedly blinking.

There was nothing in his demeanor to suggest the violent nature of someone who had threatened those around him with a kitchen knife and a golf club.

Why did Shibuya resort to such a violent act? The reason will undoubtedly become clear as the investigation progresses.