Cutting Into Innocence

A madman kills eight children and rattles Japan

Help me!" the schoolchildren detected the feeble, desperate cry from a nearby classroom in an elementary school in Ikeda, a suburb of Osaka in western Japan. Then they heard more screaming. In a first-floor classroom, second-graders were just finishing up a music class when a large man in cream-colored trousers dashed madly toward them, rambling incoherently as he wielded a 6-in. kitchen knife. He stabbed three boys standing by a chalkboard. When a girl tried to flee, he chased her down a corridor. "Run! Run!" a child yelled. A teacher threw a chair at the man but he dodged it, stabbed...

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