Man Indicted for Murder of Girl in Central Japan

June 26, 2018

Niigata- A 23-year-old man was indicted on Monday for murdering a seven-year-old girl and abandoning her body on a railway track in Niigata Prefecture, central Japan, last month.

The Niigata District Public Prosecutors Office charged Haruka Kobayashi with murder, mutilation and abandonment of a body and indecent assault resulting in death.

The prosecutors have not disclosed whether Kobayashi has accepted or denied the charges.

According to the indictment and other sources, Kobayashi kidnapped the elementary school second-grader to molest her after driving into her on a road in Nishi Ward in the city of Niigata, the capital of the prefecture, in the afternoon of May 7.

Later in the day, he strangled the girl in a parking lot and abandoned her body on a JR Echigo Line railway track in the Aoyamasuido area.

Kobayashi told investigators after his arrest that he choked the girl, who he did not know, but denied he intended to kill her, investigative sources said.

The girl went missing on her way home after leaving school with friends shortly after 3 p.m. on May 7.

Her body was found around 10:30 p.m. the same day on the railway track not far from her home.

An autopsy found that she was choked to death before being run over by a train. Jiji Press