ASAHIKAWA, HOKKAIDO \u2013 Public\u00a0prosecutors on Monday demanded a 27-year prison term for a woman suspected of killing a 17-year-old girl by allegedly causing her to fall from a suspension bridge\u00a0in Hokkaido in 2024.<\/p>\n
At the lay judge trial at the Asahikawa District Court, the prosecutors heavily criticized the defendant, Riko Uchida, saying that she was the mastermind of the incident and that her actions, which \u201ctrampled on the dignity of the girl\u2019s personality,\u201d were \u201cextremely brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defense emphasized in the final plea that Uchida did not actually kill the girl.<\/p>\n
The verdict will be handed down to the 23-year-old defendant on June 22.<\/p>\n
The prosecutors alleged that Uchida and at least one other person \u201capplied some physical force\u201d to the high school girl, who was embroiled in a dispute with Uchida over social media photos, so she would fall off a suspension bridge in the city of Asahikawa.<\/p>\n
Even if the girl was not pushed directly, acts leading to her plunge should amount to murder, they argued.<\/p>\n
The prosecutors also claimed that Uchida and others took the girl into a car, locked her up for a long time and assaulted her. Forced to sit naked on the bridge\u2019s railing and repeatedly yelled at, she \u201cmust have been pushed to the mental limit where she could think of nothing but falling from the bridge,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the defense side denied Uchida intended to kill the girl and said that she did not witness the moment the girl fell from the bridge.<\/p>\n
Uchida said: \u201cI felt the weight of the result once again. I will spend days of reflection, apology and atonement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahead of the arguments, the deceased girl\u2019s father tearfully called for a punishment that would reflect his daughter\u2019s wishes.<\/p>\n
According to the indictment, in April 2024, Uchida conspired with others, including an already convicted 21-year-old woman, to have the victim sit naked on the bridge\u2019s railing before\u00a0recording\u00a0her apology on video and killing\u00a0the girl by forcing her to fall into the river below after shouting \u201cFall!\u201d and \u201cJust die!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ASAHIKAWA, HOKKAIDO \u2013 Public\u00a0prosecutors on Monday demanded a 27-year prison term for a woman suspected of killing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[707,709,153,8,708,1240,710],"class_list":["post-40990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hokkaido","tag-asahikawa","tag-bullying","tag-hokkaido","tag-japan","tag-japanese-courts","tag-social-media","tag-teens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}