Sentencing has been handed to a woman who gave birth in an airport restroom, and then subsequently killed the baby girl and buried her in a nearby park.
This tragic story began in November of 2019. Sayuri Kitai, then age 22, gave birth to a little girl in the restroom of Tokyo’s Haneda airport.
She strangled her newborn baby with her hands after putting toilet paper in the baby’s mouth. She then buried the body in Italy Park in Higashishimbashi in Tokyo’s Minato Ward on Nov 3, 2019.
Kitai lived in Kobe City. According to police records, she arrived at the airport on a flight from Kobe on the evening of November 3, 2019. She was said to be on a job-hunting trip.
Based on security camera footage taken at the airport, she was inside one of the ladies’ room stalls for about 40 minutes. After staying one night at a hotel attached to the airport, she departed the next day.
On the morning of November 8, police officers found the baby’s body, umbilical cord still attached, on the south side of Italy Park in Shimbashi. They had gotten a tip from a passerby.
The results of an autopsy revealed that she had died due to suffocation.
Kitai emerged as a person of interest after police viewed about 29,000 people who appeared in security camera footage shot in the area.
Police believe she gave birth at the airport, suffocated the infant and put the body in a paper bag. Kitai then traveled to the park on the Tokyo Monorail and, after digging a hole by hand, she buried the body.
She was caught and placed in custody a few days later.
Her trial just ended and Kitai was found guilty by the Tokyo District Court of murder and abandonment of the body.
Throughout the trial, Kitai had admitted to the charges, but continually said that she panicked.”My mind went blank, and I found myself putting toilet paper in the baby’s mouth.”
But Presiding Judge Toshiro Nohara dismissed the woman’s claim, saying, “The defendant was calm when she gave birth, as she stopped at a restaurant with the body hidden in a bag, showing no signs of disorientation.”
Sayuri Kitai was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
Horrible. Just horrible.
H/T Japan Today
Feature Photo: pxfuel
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5 comments
Only 5 years?!?!?!
I thought the exact same thing. But it’s Japan…totally different system.
Omg only 5 years! Awful system doesn’t care about human life.
And they give out 10 year sentences for minor drug charges. I’ll never get it
Higher sentence than someone performing partial birth abortion in the USA. She may have fallen into an economic class that resulted in a light sentence and could be compared to Chapter XXIX of the Penal Code of Japan is a guess.