Two people have died in the Japanese city of Yokohama after a teenage girl jumped to her death from a shopping centre, hitting a pedestrian below.
The 17-year-old high school student jumped from a building in a crowded shopping district, hitting a 32-year-old woman who was out with her friends on Saturday evening.
The two were immediately taken to hospital around 18:00 local time (09:00 GMT), where the girl died an hour later. The woman also died soon after.
It’s not clear why she might have killed herself, though more people under the age of 18 in Japan kill themselves on 1 September – just ahead of the new school term – than on any other day, according to official statistics.
Last year, 513 children took their own lives in Japan, with “school problems” cited as the most common factor.
The most recent incident in Yokohama mirrors a similar episode in 2020, when a 17-year-old boy jumped from the roof of a shopping centre, killing a 19-year-old female student in a busy district of Osaka.
At the time, the boy was posthumously charged with manslaughter, meaning that his family owed compensation to the family of the victim he killed. However, the charge was dropped shortly afterwards.
So far, the authorities have not indicated any culpability with regard to Saturday night’s deaths.
While Japan’s suicide rate is slowly decreasing among the general population, it is rising among young Japanese people.
BBC
