Mutilated Cats Are Being Discovered Throughout a Japanese Metropolis and Colleges Are Terrified
Elementary faculties and native officers have responded to grotesque cat murders by growing patrolling in neighborhoods. Photograph: Kyodo Information through Getty Photographs
Mutilated cat carcasses are being discovered throughout a Japanese metropolis, prompting native authorities and elementary faculties to bolster safety measures to guard younger college students from a possible serial cat killer.
On Sunday morning, police in Saitama metropolis—situated in larger Tokyo—had been alerted to {a partially} buried cat with its paws and head lacking. The cat’s guts had been discovered hours afterward a close-by street. In mid-February, police additionally discovered a severed cat jaw in a college yard, tied with a chunk of string and hanging from the playground bars.
Fearing that the killer of the cats might additionally hurt younger kids, close by elementary faculties and native officers have elevated patrolling in areas close to the place the carcasses had been discovered. They’ve additionally been escorting kids house and making them stroll in giant teams.
“It’s been some time since I’ve heard of a grotesque cat homicide like this one in our prefecture,” Kazuhiko Noguchi, who manages resident relations on the police district of Minami, advised VICE World Information. The elevated patrols additionally served to reassure the neighborhood, he added.
The grisly cat killings have shocked residents and animal rights activists in Saitama prefecture, the place a person notoriously killed and tortured greater than a dozen cats and posted movies of it on-line six years in the past. The person was sentenced to 22 months in jail.
Takuya Anzai, an official who has coordinated patrol efforts on behalf of the Saitama academic board, mentioned some mother and father had been particularly involved due to an notorious case of baby murders in 1997 carried out by a 14-year-old boy in Kobe prefecture.
Earlier than the juvenile killer slayed his victims, aged 10 and 11, he additionally dismembered cats’ our bodies. “That was a darkish time in Japanese historical past,” Anzai advised VICE World Information, including that the schooling board is asking pupils to alert their lecturers in the event that they discover something out of the bizarre.
Police are at the moment investigating the 2 cat murders as violations of Japan’s animal safety legislation. Killing or harming an animal is punishable with a most 5 yr jail sentence or a wonderful of as much as 5 million yen ($36,600).
In 2021, Japanese police made 170 arrests for suspected animal abuse—the very best since data started in 2010.
Yukiko Furuhashi, the pinnacle of a cat safety group in central Japan’s Aichi prefecture, known as for higher background checks for potential pet house owners. “Animals shouldn’t be handled as if they’re toys,” she advised VICE World Information.
“This abuser went as far as to depart the cat our bodies in public areas, the place there may very well be safety cameras—clearly this can be a purely evil act,” she mentioned.
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