Couple arrested for beating 3-year-old boy unconscious

The Mainichi Shimbun
March 16, 2007
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070316p2a00m0na020000c.html

RUMOI, Hokkaido -- A man and woman who hit her 3-year-old son and hurled him across the room of her apartment, leaving him unconscious with brain injuries, were arrested Friday, police said.

Arrested were Maki Suzuki, 26, and Daisuke Tsubone, 29, both residents of Rumoi.

When questioned by investigators, Suzuki told police that she had gotten angry at her son.

"He wouldn't stop crying and didn't listen to what I said. I got angry with him," she was quoted as telling police.

Investigators said that between 8 p.m. on Wednesday and 12 a.m. on Thursday, the suspects threw Suzuki's 3-year-old son onto the veranda of their home and left him there. They also allegedly picked him up by his ankles, swung him around and hurled him onto a sofa and hit him, leaving him with a brain hemorrhage. The 3-year-old remains unconscious in serious condition.

City officials said a welfare advisor visited Suzuki's home at about 9:40 a.m. on Thursday and instructed her to take her son to a hospital after seeing him lying down. An examination at the hospital revealed that he had a brain injury and a doctor alerted police.

Officials said that at first Suzuki had lied to the welfare advisor, saying her son was sleeping with a cold.

Suzuki had violently treated her son in the past, and the private nursery that he attended contacted city welfare officials in October 2006, saying he had scars on his body. In January this year, officials asked her to spend time apart from her son in an institution, but she reportedly resisted the suggestion strongly, saying, "I want to raise my child myself."

Sources close to the investigation said Suzuki had gone into hospital with her son at the end of October 2006 after being subjected to domestic violence from her former husband. At the beginning of November the same year she divorced her husband.

Due to an internal organ ailment she suffered because of violent treatment by her husband, she became mentally unstable, and when she suffered stress she reportedly began acting violently toward the 3-year-old. (Mainichi)

March 16, 2007