The Tokyo District Court has sentenced a 72-year-old man to nine years in prison for killing a 28-year-old female acquaintance by causing her to ingest lethal amounts of stimulant drugs.

According to the court ruling handed down on Tuesday, Nobuaki Ishihara, a real estate company executive who lives in Shibuya Ward, caused the death of Yuri Igarashi by giving her sake mixed with stimulant drugs, or kakuseizai, as they called in Japanese, Fuji TV reported. Igarashi visited his residence on the afternoon of July 18, which security surveillance camera footage confirms.

That same afternoon, Igarashi sent her friend a message on Line, in which she said: “A man tried to get me to take drugs and I refused, but I think I just drank sake mixed with stimulants.” She later sent a second Line message in which she said she would “go to the police,” but was unable to be reached after that.

Ishihara said Igarashi passed out that night. The next morning, she was unresponsive and he called 119. However, she was pronounced dead at the scene. But he denied giving the woman stimulant drugs. An autopsy revealed that Igarashi had consumed stimulant drugs more than 100 times the amount considered lethal.

The ruling by the lay judge panel called the defendant’s criminal behavior “extremely malicious” for forcing the victim to ingest lethal amounts of stimulants. The presiding judge added that Ishihara, who had pleaded not guilty, “made unreasonable excuses and showed no remorse from start to finish despite the seriousness of his criminal liability.”

Source: FNNプライムオンライン