2 Die after car hits nursery kids in Western Japan

May 9, 2019

Otsu, Shiga Pref.--A car ploughed into a group of nursery children on a sidewalk in the western Japan prefecture of Shiga on Wednesday morning, leaving two of them dead and one critically injured and unconscious.

According to prefectural police, 13 children from a nearby nursery and three nursery teachers were taken to hospital by ambulance after the accident.

The two victims were Gaku Ito, a 2-year-old boy, and Yui Harada, a 2-year-old girl. The unconscious child is a boy.

Eight of the 13 other pedestrians suffered serious injuries, such as broken bones, and five had minor injuries.

The accident occurred on the sidewalk at a T-intersection of a prefectural road in Otsu, the capital of Shiga.

According to the police, the minivehicle crashed onto the sidewalk and hit the group right after bouncing against another car.

The accident site, about 200 meters north of the nursery, is close to Lake Biwa, the biggest lake in Japan. The children had been waiting for the traffic light to change in order to cross the road to get to the lakeside area.

The police arrested the 62-year-old driver of the minivehicle and Fumiko Shintate, 52, the driver of the other car, at the scene for alleged negligent driving resulting in injuries. The minivehicle's driver was released later.

Both women were unharmed in the accident. No one was in the cars other than the drivers.

During questioning by the police, both drivers, who were on their way home from shopping at the time of the accident, claimed that the traffic light was green, according to investigative sources.

The police suspect that Shintate was not looking ahead carefully when the crash happened. The police will investigate the accident in detail by changing the charges against the suspects to negligent driving resulting in deaths and injuries, the sources said. Jiji Press