The suicide of a 14-year-old junior high school girl in the city of Asahikawa, Hokkaido, in 2021 is highly likely to have been caused by bullying, a committee set up by the city to investigate the death said Sunday.
"If there had been no bullying, suicide would not have occurred," the committee said of the death of Saaya Hirose, who was found frozen to death at an Asahikawa park in March 2021.
Its investigation came after a separate third-party committee set up by the city's education board said in September 2022 that the causal relationship between the bullying and the suicide was unknown.