Schoolgirl stabbed to death by tutor in Japan

A 12-YEAR-old girl was stabbed to death by a tutor in a classroom in western Japan yesterday, local police said, the third killing of a schoolgirl in less than a month.

Media reports said the man had moved 12 other students to another room and locked the girl inside a classroom before stabbing her to death with a kitchen knife. Wires to a surveillance camera in the room had been cut, reports said.

Police in Kyoto prefecture said they had arrested 23-year-old Yu Hagino, an instructor at a private tutoring school, on suspicion of the murder of Sayano Horimoto, a sixth-grader." The suspect has said that he stabbed the student after getting into a verbal dispute," a police spokesman said, adding that the stabbing occurred in Uji city in Kyoto.

The girl died after being taken to hospital, he said. Hagino told police that the girl - who had stopped taking his classes this month - had made fun of him earlier, media reported.

Hagino is a student at a nearby university and a part-time instructor at the tutoring school, the reports said. Responding to the attack, the government vowed to consider steps to prevent recurrences at a time when parents are becoming increasingly nervous about their children becoming victims of crime.

The incident, which occurred yesterday morning, was front-page news in the evening editions of major dailies, some of which carried photographs of the two-storey building where the girl was killed.

The incident followed the recent murders of two seven-year-old girls in the space of just over a week that has pushed Japan to consider everything from bus services to high-tech gadgets to keep small children safe between home and school.

Airi Kinoshita and Yuki Yoshida were killed in separate incidents as they made their way home from elementary school alone along deserted roads.

The murders were the latest in a series of crimes to shatter Japan's belief in the safety of its streets.

"This is truly sad," Kyodo news agency quoted Justice Minister Seiken Sugiura as telling a news conference.

"We need to prevent a chain reaction. I would like to carefully study the incident and think of steps that can be taken," Sugiura was quoted by Kyodo as saying in Aichi prefecture in central Japan.