The 17-year-old Saga Prefecture boy arrested in a bus hijacking has told police he "felt deserted" by his parents when he was put into a mental institution two months before the incident, police sources said Wednesday.
Police the same day handed the youth over to prosecutors in connection with the Golden Week hijacking and on suspicion of murder and attempted murder during the incident, the sources said.
The prosecutors will decide within 20 days whether to indict the teen, who was first arrested early in the morning of May 4, when riot police stormed the hijacked intercity bus at a highway rest area in Higashi-Hiroshima.
Two months prior to the hijacking, the boy had been placed in a state-run mental institution in Saga after barricading himself in his room.