SAGAMIHARA, Japan—Japanese police on Wednesday searched the home of the suspect in a mass stabbing spree that left 19 people dead at a facility for the mentally disabled.
The suspect, 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu, was transferred earlier in the day from a local police station to the prosecutor’s office in Yokohama.
The attacker left dead or injured nearly a third of the approximately 150 patients at the facility in a matter of 40 minutes early Tuesday, Kanagawa prefectural authorities said. The fire department said 25 were wounded, 20 of them seriously.
Uematsu turned himself into police about two hours after the pre-dawn attack in Sagamaihara, a city about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of central Tokyo.
He had worked at the facility until February, when he delivered a letter to Parliament outlining a bloody plan to attack two facilities for the handicapped and saying all disabled people should be put to death.
Kanagawa prefecture welfare department official Shogo Nakayama said that officials from the Sagamihara facility confronted him about the letter a few days later, and Uematsu quit.
