Police in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, have arrested a 16-year-old boy on suspicion of arson after he allegedly burned down the house of a former classmate.
According to police, the boy is suspected of breaking into the two-story house and starting a fire just before 9 a.m. on Jan 24, NTV reported.
At the time, the parents and two of their three children were out. The third child, a 12-year-old girl, jumped from the second floor to escape the fire. She was taken to hospital to be treated for a leg injury and smoke inhalation.
The house was completely burned down.
The boy is said to be a former junior high school classmate of a boy who lives in the house.
Immediately after the fire, a witness saw a teenage boy leaving the house. Police identified the suspect after analyzing street surveillance camera footage.
Accompanied by his father, the boy turned himself to police on Saturday night.
Police said he has denied the charge and quoted him as saying, "I'll leave it all to my lawyer.”
© Japan Today
11 Comments
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owzer
Don’t push the quiet kid too far!
GuyDjin
"I'll leave it all to my lawyer.” Would not like to be the lawyer...
Negative Nancy
We can only speculate, but you don't burn someone's house down for no reason. There's no smoke without fire.
GuruMick
Nancy...I prefer a discussion with my adversaries...burning houses seems a little too much.
Garthgoyle
Thanks to his bad decision one, a family doesn't have a home. Two, his parents will be in debt because they owe that family a house. And three, he'll spend his entire high school life in a school for delinquent youths.
TokyoLiving
Send that pathetic clown to jail or something for juvenile criminal clowns..
Negative Nancy
It might have been a mistake... maybe... Cooking experiment gone wrong? Plugged in a dodgy electrical applicance?
GuruMick
Nancy..."cooking experiment " ?
Thats something wife does.
Should I be concerned ?
iron man
We can only speculate, but you don't burn someone's house down for no reason. There's no smoke without fire.
Or maybe considering the ages and the alleged perps response there would be no fire without a disagreement about a smoke, mere speculation of course. I just hope the injured daughter who has not admitted any knowledge of cooking also has a lawyer!
hobnob
Given his vicious and maladaptive behavior, I would bet the perpetrator experienced severe adverse childhood experiences that probably involved traumatic threats and/or harm. Regardless, something happened to him to prevent him from developing healthy emotional self-regulation or functional conflict resolution skills. As the adage goes, "Hurt people hurt people."
Garthgoyle
This is a common false assumption.
Perfectly raised individuals, raised with all the love and care of a good family, can grow up to be a rapist, burn an entire family just to see people burn, or turn out to be any kind of other messed up individual.
And just the same, a person who was bitten as a kid by his/her parents or had a violent childhood, can turn out to be a perfectly and loving parent and normal and peaceful person.