A 24-year-old man in Japan dressed in a Joker costume inspired by the character from the Batman comics, sprayed hydrochloric acid, stabbed several people and set fire to a commuter train in Tokyo on Sunday, October 31.
The incident reportedly left 17 people injured, including at least one person in critical condition battling for life. The attack reportedly took place at around 20:00 local time (11:00 GMT) near Kokuryo station, in Tokyo’s western suburbs.
According to local news, the people were heading for Halloween parties in the city when the attack took place.
Police arrested the youth on spot and are now investigating him for the attempted murder, NHK reports.
Videos of the incident have emerged on social media, which shows petrified people running headlong on the train, stumbling through a connecting door between compartments and leaping through the trains’ windows as it came to an emergency stop.
Speaking about the attack, one eyewitness told the Yomiuri newspaper that at first, he thought it was a Halloween stunt until he saw a man walking towards him slowly waving a long knife.
In a video shared by a news portal News For All, the accused is seen sitting and casually smoking after pulling off the attack.
The accused reportedly told authorities that he admired the Batman character Joker. He said wanted to kill people so he could be sentenced to death, local media reports quoted the authorities as revealing.
Shunsuke Kimura, who filmed one of the videos, told the national NHK broadcaster that the scene was “horrifying”. “Train doors were closed and we had no idea what was happening, and we jumped from the windows,” he said.
The stabbing incident on a train was the second in the Japanese capital this year. In August, one day before the Tokyo Olympic Games’ closing ceremonies, a 36-year-old man attacked ten passengers on another commuter train. Then, the suspect had told police that he wanted to attack women who looked happy.