Nara woman confesses to strangling 16-year-old daughter

Japan Today
Saturday, December 1, 2007 at 21:18 EST
Source: http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/422343

NARA — A 16-year-old high school girl was found dead Saturday at her home in Tenri, Nara Prefecture, in what police believe was a murder committed by the girl's mother. A woman believed to be the girl's mother told investigators, "I strangled my daughter to death," police said. The girl was identified as Minako Nakamoto.

Police found Nakamoto's body after the woman, 38, confessed to killing her. Police will perform an autopsy to determine the cause of her death.

The woman was found after she was grazed by a train on a railway track that she had walked onto around 1:10 p.m. She sustained minor injuries.

"I thought about dying too," police quoted the woman as saying.

The woman has been hospitalized at a psychiatric hospital in the western Japan prefecture since mid-November. The hospital had allowed her to stay out overnight from Friday.

Nakamoto lived with her mother and uncle.

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