Japan gunman kills himself after shooting two people: police

TOKYO: A middle-aged man killed himself after shooting his mother-in-law and a bar employee dead with a shotgun today in a bar in western Japan, police and reports said.

Another man was wounded in the shooting at around 8:00 pm (0430 IST) in Hibikino City, outside Osaka, an Osaka prefectural police spokesman said.

"The suspect fired the shotgun inside the bar and then shot himself on a street outside," the official said by telephone.

The gunman was later identified as an Osaka city government employee, Yasuhisa Sugiura, 49, Kyodo news agency reported.

The two people he killed were his mother-in-law Yoshiko Tanaka, 66, and a bar employee in his 20s, Kyodo said, quoting police.

Sugiura and his mother-in-law were at the bar to talk about a divorce, according to witnesses, Kyodo reported.

He got excited and left in the middle of the discussion, returning later with a gun, it said.

Tanaka owned the bar, the Asahi Shimbun said in its Internet edition, quoting police sources.

Gun crimes are rare in Japan, where illegal possession of a firearm carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
VAI:- timesofindia