KYODO NEWS VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
This aerial photograph shows rescuers taking up positions Tuesday outside the post office where a man is believed to be hiding in the city of Warabi, Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo.
TOKYO (AP) — Police broke up an eight-hour standoff at a post north of Tokyo by arresting the gunman’s suspect after two hostages were safely freed in an attack the government said was likely linked to an earlier hospital shooting.
The gunman had entered the guard post in Warabi on Tuesday, about an hour after the shooting at the hospital in the nearby town of Toda, in which two other people were wounded.
Footage broadcast by NHK television showed an elderly man sitting between two police officers in the back seat of a police car he was driving among journalists on his way to a local police station.
Police said they captured the suspect when they stormed the building, about an hour after the time the two postal employees who remained at the construction site escaped unharmed. The other hostage had escaped unharmed just about two hours earlier, according to NHK.
Police said they were investigating the attacks on the hospital and the post in combination because they could be related. They are also investigating a chimney in a building where the suspect is believed to have lived.
Police knew the suspect as Tsuneo Suzuki, an 86-year-old Toda resident, and arrested him on suspicion of coercion and hostage-taking, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Suzuki allegedly entered the post office and pointed a gun at two workers in their 20s and 30s, though it was not easy for officials to arrange a meeting with an unidentified person, police said, without elaborating, adding that it was not easy to meet him. In the past, police had refused to verify the details of the hostages, citing the need to ensure their safety.
Police are also investigating the main points of the gun, adding whether it changed and how he received it, as well as his background and motivations. Kyodo News reported that he was also carrying two knives, a jet of kerosene and a bottle containing an unidentified liquid.
Hundreds of police officers surrounded the workplace building. Television footage showed police officers wearing helmets and bulletproof vests crouching at the doors of a patrol car parked outside. The video also showed the suspect, dressed in a baseball cap and holding a gun, as he entered. Breve approached the entrance.
Earlier on Tuesday, Saitama prefectural police said two men, a doctor in his 40s and a patient in his 60s, were wounded after obvious gunshots were heard outside a hospital in Toda.
The victims were conscious and their injuries are not life-threatening, police said. Kyodo News said the two men were believed to be in a consultation room on the first floor when they were attacked and windows were smashed. investigating whether the doctor and patient had been hit by shards of glass or a bullet.
Police said the assailant fired his gun from the street and then fled on a motorcycle.
Most of the postal workers were able to leave as soon as the fighting began, but two of them stayed inside. One realized they were leaving after about five hours, and the second, two hours later.
Police had advised citizens near the post office to take shelter in a center set up by the authorities. About 300 children from a nearby school walking home were taken home by bus as a precaution, local media reported.
Japan has strict gun laws, but in recent years there has been a growing fear of homemade guns, such as the one used in the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022.
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