An 18-year-old youth was sentenced Monday to a prison term of between five and 10 years at a district court here for stabbing a classmate to death after stalking her because she refused his advances.
Judge Tsutomu Yasue, of the Okazaki branch of the Nagoya District Court, said the defendant had earlier expressed admiration for a 14-year-old boy who killed a boy aged 11 and a 10-year-old girl and injured three other children in Kobe in 1997 for "doing a very bad thing and causing a great sensation with the mass media."
The defendant, whose name is being withheld under the Juvenile Law because he is a minor, stabbed to death 16-year-old Hanae Nagatani in Nishio, Aichi Prefecture, on the morning of Aug. 9, 1999, according to the court.
The defendant had been a classmate of the victim at Nishio Higashi High School and at a local junior high school, but he dropped out of the high school in his first year.