Japanese man goes into shooting sprees over bankruptcy, uncollected debts

MANILA, Philippines—A Japanese national went into two shooting sprees in Marikina City and San Mateo town in Rizal over unpaid debts on Sunday night, killing his brother-in-law and wounding five others, including a six-year-old child, police said.

Police said the 56-year-old suspect, Kunimitsu Matsuo, who was married to a Filipina and has been residing in Barangay (village) Malanday, Marikina, was arrested on Monday morning, in his hiding place in Antipolo City.

Senior Superintendent Gabriel Lopez, Marikina police chief, said that at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, after a drinking bout with other residents on Merrit Street in Barangay Concepcion Uno, the Japanese man armed, with a .45-cal. pistol, went to the house of his brother-in-law, identified as Salvador Panim, 30, and shot him in the chest .

Afterward, he began shooting indiscriminately, wounding Orlando Corpuz, 56, and Evangeline Silot, 56, and her six-year-old grandchild.

Not content with what he had done, he even fired at Silot’s car parked in front of their house and shattered its front windshield, Lopez said.

Those who witnessed the shooting rampage said that afterward, the Japanese boarded a tricycle and asked to be taken to San Mateo, Rizal.

In San Mateo, he shot and wounded at least two other people, Lopez said.

Panim, his first victim, was pronounced dead on arrival by the attending doctor at the Amang Rodriguez Medical Center while the other victims in San Mateo and Marikina were being treated for gunshot wounds.

“It was an act of an angry man,” he said, adding that the Japanese man was bankrupt and abandoned by his Filipina wife.

The Japanese national had been running a taxi business, which soon went bankrupt before his wife left him.

Earlier, his brother-in-law and his wife’s relatives refused to pay their debts to the Japanese, enraging him further.

Detained at the Marikina police station, Matsuo is facing murder and frustrated murder at the Marikina Prosecutor’s Office.