A man armed with a hammer wounded five people in Tokyo, mostly a teenager, whom he hit in the face before spraying three police officers with an unknown substance and fleeing, Japanese media reports.
The suspect, believed to be 44 years old, attacked two teenagers yesterday Wednesday, according to media reports, for talking loudly near his home in the Fusa municipality, a suburb of Japan’s capital.
The first victim, a teenage student, suffered a serious facial injury. The second, a classmate, was injured-slightly-in the shoulder, the NHK television network and Kyodo news agency reported.
Police officers rushed to the scene, where the suspect sprayed three of them with an unknown substance before fleeing, according to Kyodo.
The metropolitan police in Japan’s capital limited themselves to saying they had no comment on the case when contacted by Agence France-Presse.
Violent crimes are generally considered rare in Japan, a country that records one of the lowest homicide rates internationally and has laws on gun ownership and carrying that are among the strictest in the world.
