Hit and run
This is the corner of Nakano dori and Ome kaido, near the Shin-Nakano Subway Station in Nakano Ward, central Tokyo. It’s a few hundred meters from my neighborhood, and it’s a neighborhood I know well because I often frequent the area. It’s bad news when you see flowers like this set up at an intersection, because what they are is a makeshift memorial for someone who has died at that spot.
Because there is a park right there on the corner - Sugiyama Park - I worried that maybe a child had died. That idea is especially upsetting.
Instead, I learned that there was a fatal hit-and-run incident at this intersection early Sunday morning, May 19th. A 19-year-old Uzbek man has been arrested in connection with the incident that killed Taichi Sato (52), a resident of the area, as he was walking on one of the crosswalks shortly after 3:30 a.m. I don't know which crosswalk, which direction, or what the circumstances were. Why was he out walking around at 3:30 in the morning? It sounds odd to me, but ....
A woman on a bicycle was also hit, suffering serious injuries including broken ribs.
The man was driving without a license, and turned himself in to the police station about an hour later. The man admitted to the charges, saying, “I didn’t know how to call an ambulance, and I was scared to see blood, so I just left.”
Damned foreigners!
On the afternoon of Monday 20th, I noticed two television cameras filming at the intersection, and for some time afterwards traffic police were conspicuously visible there.