Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was gunned down yesterday while campaigning for a parliamentary election, sending shockwaves through Japan and around the globe.
The longest-serving leader of modern Japan was shot by a lone gunman and died hours later.
It is alleged that the shooter, Tetsuya Yamagamia, used a homemade firearm and was tackled and arrested.
“I am simply speechless over the news of Abe’s death,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Abe’s protégé.
“This attack is an act of brutality that happened during the elections – the very foundation of our democracy – and is absolutely unforgivable,” he added.
Abe had been making a campaign speech outside a train station when two shots rang out. Security officials were then seen tackling a man in grey T-shirt and beige trousers.
Abe was taken to hospital in cardiopulmonary arrest and showing no vital signs. He was declared dead at 5:03 p.m. (0803 GMT), having bled to death from deep wounds to the heart and the right side of his neck.
He had received more than 100 units of blood in transfusions over four hours, Hidetada Fukushima, the professor in charge of emergency medicine at Nara Medical University Hospital, told a televised news conference.
Police said the gunman had admitted to shooting Abe with a handmade firearm he had fashioned out of metal and wood.
Police said he was a Nara resident who worked at Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Forces for three years but now appeared to be unemployed. They were investigating whether he had acted alone.
Investigators found “several” other handmade guns at his one-room flat in Nara city, police added.
The suspect said he bore a grudge against a “specific organisation” and believed Abe was part of it, and that his grudge was not about politics, the police said, adding it was not clear if the unnamed organisation actually existed.
Homemade guns, also known as “ghost guns,” can be created using a 3-D printer, or they can be purchased as full kits online.
According to Fox, the kit is not considered a gun until it is assembled, “so gun laws don’t apply,” at least in the United States. They also do not have serial numbers and therefore cannot be traced.