2 Die, one unconscious as car hits nursery kids in Western Japan

May 8, 2019

Otsu, Shiga Pref.--A passenger minivehicle 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 the Shiga prefectural police department, 13 children from a nearby nursery and three nursery teachers were taken to hospital by ambulance after the incident.

The two victims were Gaku Ito, a 2-year-old boy, and Yui Harada, a 2-year-old girl. They were confirmed dead on the way to hospital. 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, around 10:15 a.m. (1:15 a.m. GMT), after the 13 children and three teachers left the nursery for a walk at 10 a.m.

According to the police, the minivehicle crashed onto the sidewalk and hit the group right after bouncing against a larger passenger 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 Michiko Shimoyama, the 62-year-old driver of the minivehicle, and Fumiko Shintate, 52, the driver of the larger car, at the scene for alleged negligent driving resulting in injuries.

Both women, residents of Otsu, were unharmed in the accident. No one was in the cars other than the drivers.

The minivehicle was on the sidewalk, and kids and teachers were lying on the ground, a man who rushed to the scene immediately after the accident said. "Some kids were crying," he said.

During questioning by the police, both Shimoyama and Shintate, who were each on their way home from shopping, claimed that the traffic light was green, according to investigative sources.

The police department suspects that both drivers were not looking ahead carefully when the crash happened. The police will investigate the fatal accident in detail by changing the charges against the suspects to negligent driving resulting in deaths and injuries. Jiji Press