Osaka Police Struggling to Find Escaped Suspect

September 12, 2018

Osaka- Police searched accommodation facilities in Osaka Prefecture on Tuesday for a 30-year-old man who escaped from a detention house of a local police station almost a month ago.

Deploying a total of some 90,000 officers, the Osaka Prefectural Police Department has conducted door-to-door checks, including of vacant houses and warehouses mainly in and around Matsubara, in the western Japan prefecture, where the parents of the suspect, Junya Hida, live.

The police have also contacted his acquaintances and relatives, suspecting that they might be sheltering Hida. They have yet to obtain any significant clue to his whereabouts, however.

Life-size cutouts of the suspect have been installed at train stations and other places, while a toll-free number has been opened to seek information.

Hida, charged with rape, theft and other crimes, escaped from a visiting room of the detention facility in the Tondabayashi police station after a meeting with his lawyer on the night of Aug. 12 by breaking an acrylic plate that divided the detainee and the visitor.

He is believed to have stolen a motorcycle and snatched handbags. But the police lost trace of him on Aug. 14.

The police realized that Hida had escaped from the room at around 9:45 p.m. on Aug. 12, more than an hour after he sneaked out. Believing that the meeting with his lawyer was still going on, officers at the Tondabayashi police station did not hear the acrylic plate being broken.

The department initially issued an emergency order to deploy police officers only around the police station, judging that Hida had run away on foot and was still around. But he had already left Tondabayashi and was moving northward by bicycle.

Hida then stole a motorcycle in Matsubara. He is believed to have committed two snatching cases in the city of Osaka in the early hours of Aug. 13 and apparently obtained funds for his escape.

The police disclosed Hida's escape shortly before 1 a.m. on Aug. 13, but did not inform local residents of the incident through emails or community wireless systems until five to 14 hours later.

The department waited more than two weeks before disclosing that Hida might have changed his clothes because a hat of a police officer and a local resident's clothes were stolen.

It received more than 4,000 complaints from citizens in the month after the incident.

A senior police officer said that the department did not expect Hida to remain at large for so long.

"We deserve criticism for our handling of the case as we have been unable to find him," the officer said. Jiji Press