[Terror in Broad Daylight] Woman Attacks Male Relative with a Chainsaw… The “Baffling” Nature of a Crime Straight Out of a Horror Movie

Intending to kill the man with a chainsaw

Shortly after 8:00 a.m. on August 4, a petite woman with fair skin appeared before the media gathered at the Kanuma Police Station in Tochigi Prefecture. Her hair, tied back in a single ponytail, had brown tips.The woman furrowed her brow and glared at the cameras with wide eyes, as if she wanted to say something. She stared intently for a few seconds, but eventually lowered her gaze and got into the escort vehicle—.

“I was slashed with a chainsaw”

It was the afternoon of August 2 when a 110 emergency call came in—one so shocking it made you doubt your own ears for a moment.

Nozomi Nagata (36), unemployed and of unknown address, was arrested on the spot for attempted murder by police who rushed to a parking lot in Utsunomiya City. She is suspected of attempting to kill a male relative in his 60s with a small chainsaw.

“Around 3:00 p.m., the man approached his car in the parking lot to retrieve some belongings when suspect Nagata, wielding a chainsaw, suddenly appeared and stabbed him in the right side of the abdomen with the spinning blade from the front. It is believed that Nagata had been lying in wait for the man.

The man sustained injuries to his arm and abdomen but his life is not in danger; he subdued Nagata and called the police himself. The man stated, ‘I have no idea why I was attacked; it happened suddenly,’ while Nagata reportedly said, ‘I don’t want to say anything.’”

On the day of the incident, the “Furusato Miyako Festival” was taking place in Utsunomiya. The incident occurred in the midst of this massive festival, which reportedly draws hundreds of thousands of people over the two-day weekend, and local residents appear to have been shocked by the event.

“I just happened to be passing by the scene, and there were seven patrol cars and about 15 police officers, including those in plain clothes. At first, I thought it was a fight related to the festival or something, but when I heard a woman was swinging a chainsaw around, I was shocked.“There weren’t any bloodstains or anything like that in the parking lot, but the atmosphere was definitely chaotic,” said a man who lives nearby.

According to some reports, the suspect, Nagata, lived near the scene and was known for causing trouble while drunk. Police cars had reportedly visited his apartment on occasion. The man who was attacked is said to be his father.

“Hard to use” as a weapon?

An incident in which a person was attacked with a chainsaw—reminiscent of the horror film *The Texas Chain Saw Massacre* (1974)—sent shockwaves through the public. According to a writer familiar with the case, while chainsaws are often used to dismember corpses, it is rare for them to be used as a murder weapon.

“In August 2023, a woman in her 20s was charged with attempted murder for pressing a chainsaw blade against the neck of her sleeping boyfriend in an attempt to kill him; she was convicted last year.The woman had harbored a grudge after the man broke up with her and had purchased the chainsaw online. It appears she had also practiced “test cuts” on frozen meat and tree branches before attacking the man.

Regarding her reason for choosing a chainsaw as a weapon, she stated, ‘Because I’m not very strong, a machine is more suitable than strangling him or using a knife.’”

However, cases like this one—where someone goes so far as to specifically purchase a weapon for the crime—appear to be extremely rare.

“In a 2015 case in Aomori Prefecture where a brother in his 60s killed his older brother in his 70s, it’s said that during a dispute between the brothers, the older brother was the first to pull out a chainsaw, but the younger brother took it from him and killed him with a hatchet.“Chainsaws can be dangerous to the user depending on how they’re handled, and they’re certainly difficult to maneuver. The fact that they’re rarely found in ordinary households is likely another reason,” (ibid.)

Incidentally, *The Texas Chain Saw Massacre*, in which the monster “Leatherface” wields a chainsaw—thereby popularizing the image of “chainsaws = murder”—is said to have been inspired by the “Ed Gein case,” a gruesome real-life crime that occurred in the United States in the 20th century.

However, in reality, Ed Gein did not actually wield a chainsaw. While chainsaws have become a symbolic presence in fiction, their use in actual murder cases is extremely rare. Why did suspect Nagata choose a chainsaw as her weapon? We await further developments in the investigation.