Apparent body part of missing female student found in Ibaraki Pref.

January 31, 2019

Kamisu, Ibaraki Pref.--A body part apparently of a missing Tokyo female university student, 19, has been found in a crop field in the city of Kamisu, Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of the Japanese capital, investigative sources said Thursday.

Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department arrested Koichi Hirose, a 35-year-old jobless man of the city, the same day for allegedly burying the body of a person whose gender is unknown around Nov. 20, 2018.

Police had been questioning Hirose over the student, a resident in Tokyo's Katsushika Ward, who had been unaccounted for since late November. He was believed to be the last person who met the woman.

According to the sources, Hirose admitted that he had killed a woman whom he came to know through an online bulletin board. After he told police on Wednesday evening that he buried her body, the head of a person was found from the field in the small hours of Thursday.

The MPD is working to identify the victim. The police department is continuing its investigations, considering the possibility of serving a fresh arrest warrant on Hirose on suspicion of murder, the sources said.

The female student, in the first year at a pharmaceutical university in Tokyo, has been absent from the school after she attended a morning class on Nov. 20, according to the sources.

She has been confirmed to have traveled by train on the same day, from Ayase Station on the Joban Line of East Japan Railway Co. <9020>, or JR East, in Adachi Ward, next to Katsushika, to Kashimajingu Station on JR East's Kashima Line in Ibaraki.

In police questioning, Hirose initially said that he and the woman separated after meeting in front of his home.

But Hirose then changed his statements. Before confessing the killing and burying, Hirose told police that he and the female student had talks inside his house, according to the sources. Jiji Press