TOKYO, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Police investigators said on Wednesday that a stabbing rampage that took place near Tokyo a day earlier in which 17 children and two adults were attacked leaving two dead, took the assailant less than 20 seconds.
Ryuichi Iwasaki, 51, is believed to have stabbed the majority of the 17 school children from Caritas Elementary School, a private Catholic school in Kawasaki City close to Tokyo, as they waited for their school bus in a residential area at around 7:40 a.m. local time.
Police investigators said they believe the rampant attack began with Iwasaki fatally stabbing 39-year-old parent and Foreign Ministry official Satoshi Oyama multiple times before he dropped to the floor.
He was later found on his back near a convenience store and thereafter pronounced dead at the hospital, police officials said.
The attacker then stabbed a 45-year-old mother of one of the students, inflicting serious injuries on her, before fatally wounding Hanako Kuribayashi, an 11-year-old female sixth-grader from Tama, western Tokyo, with one or both of the 30 cm long knives he was wielding during the attack.
Other children who were waiting for the school bus were also swiftly attacked as they were standing in an orderly line in a street park in a residential area near Noborito station on the JR and Odakyu railway lines in Kawasaki City, which lies to the west of Tokyo, local police said.
Following the assailant's stabbing spree, he turned one of the knives on himself and inflicted a fatal wound to his neck.
Surveillance footage in the area has shown that Iwasaki took a train from Yomiuriland-mae on the Odakyu Line, which is the station nearest to his home, local police said.
He then arrived at Noborito station near the attack site and went to a convenience store where he left his backpack, which contained two more knives, before beginning his rapid and savage stabbing spree, police sources said.
Video footage in the area captured the assailant moving swiftly from victim to victim, stabbing and slashing them one by one, with the entire rampage lasting less than 20 seconds and taking place over a distance of 50 meters along the street.
