Cops: Tokyo Man Held Girl Captive 2 Years

He was arrested a day after she escaped
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 28, 2016 2:13 AM CDT
Cops: Tokyo Man Held Girl Captive 2 Years
Police in Japan cordon off a crime scene.   (AP Photo/Junji Kurokawa)

On March 10, 2014, a Japanese mother found a note in her mailbox. "Don't look for me," it read. The handwriting was that of her daughter, who essentially vanished on that day. The last sighting of the teen had been outside her home a few hours earlier, when she was seen talking to a young man. The now-15-year-old on Sunday escaped from what police say was a 2-year captivity at the hands of a 23-year-old. The Asahi Shimbum reports a bloodied Kabu Terauchi was seen by a newspaper delivery man at 3:15am Monday; police were called, and the suspect, who told police he had tried to kill himself with the box cutter in his hand, was apprehended.

The bleeding was too significant to allow for an interrogation, but police say the girl, who is from Asaka, Saitama Prefecture, just north of Tokyo, broke out of Terauchi's Tokyo apartment when he left to go shopping and apparently left the door unlocked. She called police from a payphone, and told them she had been "abducted in front of my home in Saitama by being forced into a car by an unfamiliar man." A source tells the Kyodo news agency that Terauchi is said to have fooled the girl into getting into his car by saying her parents were divorcing and that he would drive her to a law office. Police plan to formally arrest Terauchi, who in March graduated from Chiba University's engineering department, and charge him with kidnapping. (Police say these missing sisters were held captive for 11 months.)

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