67-year-old man arrested over murder of Kumamoto University researcher

KUMAMOTO — Police in Kumamoto City on Sunday arrested a 67-year-old man over the murder of a 35-year old researcher at Kumamoto University whose body was found in a roadside gutter in Kumamoto City on Sept 7.

Police said Kazuhiro Kumagai has initially been charged with abandoning a corpse after he admitted to leaving the body of Chisato Narahara in the gutter, Fuji TV reported. They did not say if Kumagai admitted killing Narahara.

Narahara, who was an AIDS researcher at the university in Chuo Ward, was last seen at her workplace at 5 p.m. on Sept 6. Her body, with no means of identification on it, was found at 8:30 a.m. the next day by a passerby. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation.  

After the police released a composite sketch of the woman on Sept, Narahara’s mother contacted them and said the image resembled her daughter.  

The victim’s rucksack containing her wallet and laptop, but not her cell phone, was found about 500 meters away from the body on Sept 9.

Narahara lived alone at her apartment in Kumamoto City where Kumagai used to work as a janitor. He told police that he knew the victim. He said that when he read about the discovery of Narahara's body and saw the news on TV, he panicked and fled to his hometown in the north of Kumamoto Prefecture where he was detained on Saturday night.

© Japan Today