KYOTO, (Japan): Police arrested on Wednesday (May 6) the adoptive father of a boy whose body was found abandoned in Nantan, Kyoto Prefecture, on suspicion of killing the child, according to investigation sources.
Yuuki Adachi, 37, was already in custody, having first been arrested on April 16 on suspicion of abandoning Yuki Adachi’s body.
The Kyoto prefectural police believe that Yuuki Adachi killed the boy, who was 11 when he went missing on March 23, in a public restroom near their house in the morning on the day.
During voluntary questioning by the police before his arrest last month, Yuuki Adachi said he choked his Yuki Adachi to death, according to the sources. The names Yuuki and Yuki are written with different kanji characters.
The police have said that on the morning on March 23, Yuuki Adachi drove the boy to his elementary school but did not drop him off.
The car then headed back for their home before stopping by the public restroom, which is located along a road on the way from their home to the school, according to the police.
When the boy went missing, the man was quoted by the police as saying that he stopped at the public restroom after “sending [the boy] to school.”
The police initially said the cause of Yuki Adachi’s death was unknown because there were no major external injuries found on his body during the autopsy.
However, the examination also indicated that the boy could have been murdered by someone else, prompting the police to continue investigations to obtain more evidence, according to the sources.
After Yuki Adachi went missing, his schoolbag and what looked similar to his black sneakers were later discovered at separate locations in the city. The boy’s body was discovered on April 13 at yet another location in a forest.
Even though Yuuki Adachi told the police that he sent his son to a location near his school, the police believed that his accounts included some contradictory elements, mainly because the boy was not seen in video footage from the school’s security cameras.
According to the police and other sources, Yuuki Adachi, who was married to Yuki Adachi’s mother, legally adopted the boy.
Yuki Adachi seemed to be bothered by his relationship with his adoptive father, as the boy said he “hated” the man, according to the parents of some of his classmates. - The Yomiuri Shimbun
