Wheelchair-bound Man Killed by Express Train

Watching the news, it seems like suicides by train are pretty frequent in Japan. However, few of those who jump in front of trains are wheelchair-bound:

A wheelchair-bound man was killed when he plunged off a station platform here onto railway tracks and was run over by an express train, police said.

Police are investigating whether the man in an electric wheelchair accidentally fell onto the tracks or committed suicide. None of the approximate 100 passengers on the train was injured.

A man believed to be a 61-year-old resident of Nagoya’s Minami-ku was fatally run over by a Nagoya Railroad limited express train at Shibata Station on the Tokoname Line at around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Train services were suspended for about an hour between Otagawa and Jingu-mae stations on the line after the accident, inconveniencing about 15,000 passengers.

Film from a camera at unmanned Shibata Station showed that the man had been waiting on the platform from about an hour before the accident. Just before the train passed, he plunged onto the tracks and into the path of the train.

It’s not known whether this was definitely a suicide, but the descriptions of the man aimlessly going back and forth along the platform sound like pretty common pre-suicide behavior. Police are questioning his family about possible suicide motives.