Inmate Arrested for Stabbing Another Girl in 2006

Kobe, Nov. 7 (Jiji Press)--A 45-year-old inmate serving an indefinite prison sentence for the 2004 murder of a girl in Okayama Prefecture, western Japan, was arrested Thursday in a case in which another girl was stabbed and seriously injured in the neighboring prefecture of Hyogo in 2006.

Hyogo prefectural police arrested the inmate, Kunihiko Katsuta, on suspicion of attempted murder. He has admitted to stabbing the girl with a knife but denied murderous intent, according to investigative sources.

As Katsuta has also hinted at his involvement in the 2007 murder of a 7-year-old girl in the Hyogo city of Kakogawa, police are searching for evidence.

In the 2006 case, the girl, in the fourth grade of elementary school, was stabbed in the chest and other places with a knife on her way home from a private tutoring school in the city of Tatsuno at around 6:20 p.m. on Sept. 28 that year.

Katsuta has expressed words of apology over the incident, police sources said.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]