HIGASHI HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) -- A knife-wielding teenager hijacked a passenger bus in Japan, killing a woman and holding the blade to the neck of a 6-year-old girl before police stormed the vehicle Thursday and ended the 15-hour standoff.
After a 190-mile chase and hours of talks at a highway rest stop, police charged into the bus before dawn, entering through a window and an emergency exit, and subdued the youth. None of the remaining passengers was injured.The hijacking, which began about noon Wednesday on Sanyo Expressway in Fukuoka prefecture, 560 miles southwest of Tokyo, riveted Japan. Television stations interrupted regular programming to bring overhead shots of the white bus moving slowly down the highway, chased by several police cars.
As shocking as the hijacking was for this low-crime nation, what troubled many even more was the age of the suspect -- 17, police said.
"I wonder why juveniles keep committing crimes. I'm shocked. It's becoming more and more like America," said Yoshio Zuigyo, 50.