JAKARTA - A senior member of an affiliate of one of Japan's main crime syndicates was arrested on Friday for allegedly shooting and killing the president of the well-known fast-food business in Kyoto in 2013.
Yukio Tanaka (56), a member of a group linked to the total Kudo-kai crime syndicate, is suspected of killing Takayuki Ohigashi (72), the head of Ohsho Food Service Corp.
Ohigashi's life was killed by being shot while in a parking lot in front of the company's head office on December 19, 2013.
Ohigashi was shot four times, in his chest and stomach, by a 25-caliber automatic weapon when he got out of his car in a parking lot in Yamashina Ward Kyoto. Several hundred thousand yen in cash was found left in his car.
Police suspect the shooter, who fled the scene, was someone familiar with firearms, which is relatively unusual in Japan due to strict weapons laws.
They also detected residual shots from the handle of the stolen motorcycle two months before the crime, which is believed to have been used as an escape.
A scooter, which was stolen around the same time, was also allegedly used for the same purpose. The vehicle was found near the crime scene in the spring of 2014.
In March 2016, a third-party committee investigating relations between Ohsho Food Service and an antisocial organization said the company had carried out inappropriate business transactions with a head of the group company, before Ohigashi took over in 2000.
The arrests came after a police investigation showed that the DNA traces of cigarette butts found near the crime scene matched the suspect's. Cigarettes are the same brand that Tanaka used to smoke at the time, the source said, according to Kyodo News Oct. 28.
However, police have so far found no clear connection between Tanaka and Ohigashi, and are looking further into the suspect's motives and whether he has an accomplice, the source continued.
Tanaka himself is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence imposed in November 2020, when he was found guilty of shooting a car belonging to a large general contractor in Fukuoka, southwest Japan.
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