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Tatsuya Ichihashi arrested in Osaka

Breaking news: The Japanese press is reporting that Tatsuya Ichihashi has been arrested in Osaka.

The Yomiuri says that a man who “looks like” Ichihashi was arrested attempting to board a ferry. I am not sure why their news report is uncertain, as TBS News was quite confident in proclaiming that it was Ichihashi. TBS scooped all the other networks by calling and delivering the good news to Bill Hawker, the father of Lindsay Hawker (see 1 minute into this video clip).

Japanese police had apparently not yet contacted Hawker. He expressed shock at the news that the man who killed his daughter has finally been captured and thanked the Japanese police and the Japanese media for all their hard work. On their first try, TBS had nobody on hand to translate what he was saying, so Bill got to talk for about 2 minutes in English before they stopped him to apologize to viewers about the lack of translation. When the interpreter was ready, Bill repeated his statement of thanks.

Update 2: The man has told police that he is indeed Tatsuya Ichihashi and a fingerprint check confirmed it. Sponichi.co.jp reports that he was arrested at the ferry terminal because someone had spotted him and called the police. I hope that person gets a share of the reward money.

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53 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - November 10, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Categories: General Japan Tags:

lady gaga

i like his ‘before’ face …

stupido

Yes it is too bad such a cutie like him butchered his cute little face.

lady gaga

yeah, he made a mistake …

shogunshawn

he actually looks just like my host brother in yokohma(its not him) they look identical. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=22467&id=100000493803323 its insane how similar they are

James

The sad thing is he’ll probably only be put away for illegal disposal of a body.

Tres

After all the controversy surrounding this case I really doubt it.

http://ddurgee.blogspot.com darg

If this article is to be believed, that is indeed the charge that they list:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20091110p2a00m0na027000c.html

LB

They have to charge him with something to hold him. They know for a fact he had her dead body buried in dirt in a tub on his balcony. That gives them grounds for arresting him for improper disposal of a body – something to hold him on until they can get the evidence needed for a murder charge.
MrNES

From what I understand, in most murder cases in Japan, the initial charge is for improper disposal of a body.

The purpose of this is probably for the very reason that LB here has stated.

himawari

TBS contacted Mr. Hawker the moment they got the news and had him on the phone for their special report. It was quite a mess, though – the announcer was asking questions and Mr. Hawker was answering but there was no Japanese interpretation for a good 2-3 minutes. I’m sure clips will surface later. But anyways, I’m glad to hear this news.

Asa

I saw those clips. The reporter really looked awkward. I was wondering why the reporter, who was asking him questions in English, couldn’t do the translation on the spot.?? I didn’t understand the process of everybody looking foolish and scrambling around to get a translator or, then asking the same questions again. That reporter could have done the translating right then, on the fly, so to speak. It would have made him look good to carry on that conversation in English and Japanese. …well that is what I thought.

yoga boy

I wonder who will get the 1,000 man yen reward. I’m sure his old coworkers are kicking themselves over missing out on that $$$.
lovely

glad to hear the news!!!!
jikku

The Osaka police has confirmed the man is Ichihashi and arrested him. His fingerprints matched.
yoga boy

I think it is only fair that Linday’s family be allowed an unrestricted full hour alone with him (bats included for them).

http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

Why? They believe in the courts, according to the interview I saw.

Zack

Finally!! RIP Lindsay.
ponta

“Lindsay Ann Hawker murder: Japanese police arrest suspect Tatsuya Ichihashi
Police in Japan have arrested Tatsuya Ichihashi, the prime suspect in the murder of the British teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker.”

Published: 11:11AM GMT 10 Nov 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/6536528/Lindsay-Ann-Hawker-murder-Japanese-police-arrest-suspect-Tatsuya-Ichihashi.html

Telegraph was quick to report the news.
Hanzo’

About time… Btw there was reward money? i wasnt aware of this. How much is it?

http://www.japanprobe.com James

¥10 million for information leading to the arrest of Ichihashi.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/coventry_warwickshire/8124116.stm

Hanzo’

Thank you, that’s quite a lot more then the previous reward.

leitmotiv

A trial for this would be a interesting test under the international spotlight for Japan.

I imagine some significant police malfeasance may come to light as well.

http://www.feitclub.com feitclub

Shouldn’t be much of a trial. He’ll probably confess. But at least we’ll finally find out what the hell happened.

twentymascots

Nice sensitivity fail TBS. The choice to do it live was pretty iffy to start with but then forcing him to restate everything he said line by line! Surely they could have just let the poor man go and be with his family, and interpreted what he said after.

But,yeah, finally the bastard is caught
RMilner

I want to know how he managed to stay on the run for such a long time. Someone helped him.

Roppongi Health

That is my thought as well. He was spotted on ferry while wearing black glasses. I hope ferry guy gets some reward for his initiative. It’s just fair.

Jim

Glad he was caught but he will just get 25 years and will be out someday…
Also he will become a freakshow for TV once he is released and given his parents are rich I guess he will have a fairly comfortable retirement when he leaves prison.
Anyways, at least he will pay something for his misdeeds and I hope they tack on 10 years for evading arrest.
aussie

He’s on a Bullet train headed to Tokyo as we speak, the media managed to get a shot of his face as he was boarding…

Ken Aston

They transport him by Shinkansen? Next to the passengers, or how.

The Overthinker

Criminals are transported by commercial airliner if need be. Note, obviously, on their own…

JackCrow

Finally!

May the girl rest in peace.
Sheryl

Finally, this sicko got caught. It was incredibly lucky for someone to have spotted him and called in the authorities.

Gaijin in Tokyo,
It’s patronizing people like you that contribute to the whole foreigners vs. Japanese clash. The Japanese police may not be as “door-busting gun-flashing” types that we expect from NYPD Blue or Law & Order, but many if not most of them are dedicated officers of the law. Just because you have a problem with them, doesn’t mean that it’s alright for you to make pathetic blanket statements like that. It’s easy to snipe at the Japanese with a keyboard and draw attention to yourself with your posts.

Gaijin in Tokyo

[trolling deleted]

Level3

In a TV news interview, a man (face not shown, wonder if he’s getting the 10,000,000 reward, hope someone does) working at the ferry terminal said the murderer was wearing a hat sunglasses and facemask, quietly waiting in the terminal, and didn’t resist arrest in any way as 4 officers kept a hold of him.

Since the ferry was going to depart at 7PM, when sunset is around 5PM these days, perhaps his wearing sunglasses after dark helped spark suspicion.

Well, The J justice system is now breaking even at zero points. Will they drop the ball again?
Jason

So glad this roach is off the streets.
Lady Gaga, You actually thought this guy was cute before?? Both his before and after shots give off serious “creep” vibes. Just look at this eyes.

William

They picked the worst photo to show of him (of course). When you see the other pics of him, he’s pretty cute.

Seno

About time. Maybe some peace for the family, at least.
http://glust.blogspot.com gadgetfanatic

indeed, great news.

to be honest, I’m surprised that the father took that phone call. It must’ve been difficult to realize that the call and news were not a prank.
Yukikaze

finally police got him… anyway does anyone know the anchor woman?? whats her name??
hiro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMKeYg2b7p8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o60qD2e8SyU
(Tokyo Station)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jegIFzMulCY
(Face)
hiro

Japan is a country where the capital punishment exists, too.

As the Japanese, this fellow is a capital punishment.
Timothy Takemoto

The translator is awful. She translates “agony” as “ikari” (anger) and ignores various things that Mr. Hawker has to say.

[I have no idea why this my comment may appear “spammy”… “Hmmm, your comment seems a bit spammy. We’re not real big on spam around here.” There are no links in this post. I’ll remove my url. Still. Could it be because my email address includes the letters “nospam”? But why would that suggest that this is spam??!)

k

actually I disagree that she is awful, its hard to translate man, and on the spot I’d say she did a allriightt job, she added some random stuff with a few things wrong, like when she translated used ikami and added sonotendewayorokobashikuomotteorimasu(think it was thrown in to sound really keigo-ish). She also forgot to through some things in like telling them he wanted to personally thank takiko, she really lost it too when he said he wanted to see takahashis face across a courtroom, the justice part, and to contact back in 10 minutes when he was starting to get pissed. But I mean every time she organized her thoughts, he continued to talk and , you probably know this, you have to take all that information he said after the fact, and put it in front of the subject for it all to make sense in Japanese.
Important thing is that she didn’t lose the overall meaning of his words, could have been translated better though.

That being said how well could she hear this guy? she whispers in the beginning ” sorry I cant hear”

I thought this video was cool though, I’d like to see/hear more videos where people are translating, its interesting to hear how they formulate suitable sentence structures from the person they are translating for.

Jake

Man, hearing the father speak brought a bit of a tear to my eye. Small consolation for losing your daughter, but at least they finally got the guy.
HamachiMan

Glad they FINALLY caught this guy. Should be humongous international news, considering the ‘white woman killed by Japanese guy’ angle.

The reverse situation would hardly get a peep in the international media, as has happened in the U.S.

Double standards, sadly.

KokuRyu

Don’t feed the troll.

woodrackets

Hideous either way. What a monkey.
jason

He’s really cute pre-op. I read somewhere that he funded the surgery through being a rentboy in Tokyo. A wig was discovered in his apartment which suggests he dressed up as a lady.
http://www.thesoulofjapan.blogspot.com McAlpine

I wish the media would stop calling him the murderer. He has not been proven guilty. The Hawker family is so stupid. They should stop calling him the murderer. He is merely a suspect only. Lindsay Hawker may have buried her own self under the sand and died.

LB

Yes, and she may also have beat herself silly and choked herself to death (that was the determined cause of death) before turning into a zombie and burying herself in the sand.

Jeezus.

McAlpine, your village called, and they said they want their idiot back.

Larry

it is about time that they finally caught the guy, funny thing is though it wasn’t the Police that caught him, shows how good they are at there job eh??
and for him to have been on the run this long someone had to have helped him, or else how did he get away so fast after he had killed her? he probably had someone helping him this whole time which is pretty crazy.
my heart goes out to the girls family, what a horiable thing they had to go through over these past few years.
jb

that’s unfocussed advertising for you…
http://www.chirimotsumoreba.net Jordan

Nope not really. Clutching at straws anyone?

Tatsuya Ichihashi arrested in Osaka

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