Police in Saitama Prefecture arrested a 52-year-old man on 19 August on suspicion of attempted murder, saying he left the driver behind him boxed inside a railway crossing that a train was about to enter. The man, an organisation employee living in Hasuda, denies that he meant to kill anyone.
The crossing is in Kakura, in Saitama City's Iwatsuki Ward. Mainichi Shimbun places it on the Tobu Noda Line; NNN puts it between Nanasato and Iwatsuki stations on what it calls the Tobu Urban Park Line, which it describes as linking Omiya with the direction of Chiba.
Security-camera footage obtained by NNN shows the two white cars passing one behind the other on the evening of 18 August. What follows comes from the account police have given reporters. The suspect drove across, stopped just past the tracks, got out and walked back to complain that the second car had been following too closely. The other driver, a 56-year-old company employee from Kawaguchi, was still inside the crossing at that point.
The warning bells started. The barriers came down with the second car still on the tracks, and the suspect — having watched them descend, according to Teletama — then drove off. The other driver climbed out and tried to get the vehicle clear. A local train heading for Omiya hit it. He was outside the car by then and was unhurt, and no passenger on the train was injured.
Outlets differ on why the car could not be moved in time. NNN reported that a barrier arm had caught on it, and FNN Prime Online says the driver's attempt came too late; Mainichi describes neither, saying only that the train struck a car left inside the crossing. The time given for the offence also varies — Mainichi puts it at about 5:25 in the evening, FNN and Teletama at around half past five.
Teletama reported that the man later went to Iwatsuki police station himself and said he might have caused an accident. Under questioning, according to police, he has said he stopped his car to warn the other driver about the distance between them and that killing him was never the intention. Investigators are also looking at a separate offence of endangering rail traffic. The case is at the arrest stage and the allegation has not been tested.
Investigative sources told NNN and Mainichi that the man works for the Japan Automobile Federation, the roadside assistance body known in Japan as JAF. Tobu Railway said 20 trains were cancelled and roughly 14,000 people affected.
Why it is on the board
One lens carried it: the reading list. The story was third on Nippon TV News NNN's most-read ranking when we collected, on the morning after the arrest. That number is our measurement of what Japan was reading — not a verdict on a case that remains an allegation.
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