Before the fatal shooting, Japan’s Abe was close to the crowd

NARA, Japan, July 8 (Reuters) – Moments before he was fatally shot in the back on Friday, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was doing what he has done for decades in politics: reaching out to crowds and tripping over a local candidate.

As is typical of Japan, where violent crime is rare and weapons scarce, security measures appeared lax on Friday morning as Abe spoke at an intersection outside Yamato-Saidaji Station in the western city of Nara.

The roads were not blocked and a bus and van passed behind Abe’s exposed back as he spoke to a crowd of several hundred people. Two helmeted riders on scooters turned in front of him. Inside a passing hatchback, someone waved excitedly to Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.

This account is based on footage obtained by Reuters and interviews with witnesses.

Dressed in a dark jacket despite the summer heat, Abe urged the crowd, many of them older, to re-elect Kei Sato, a candidate in Sunday’s upper house election. Some were taking pictures with their phones or wiping their eyebrows in the wetness.

Members of the special police, Japan’s equivalent of the secret service, appeared to stand to his right and behind him as the two-time prime minister told the crowd about Sato’s response to the pandemic.

“He was the type of person who didn’t look for reasons not to do something,” Abe recalled.

Behind him, a thin man wearing a gray T-shirt and beige cargo pants stepped into the road and opened fire with what police later said was a homemade handgun, sending a plume of white smoke toward Abe and the crowd. Read more

For a moment, Abe seemed unaffected. The man, identified as Tetsuya Yamagami, a 41-year-old former member of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force – the equivalent of Japan’s navy – fired again.

Yamagami “popped out of nowhere in the middle of the road holding a gun,” said businessman Makoto Ichikawa, who was near the station waiting for his wife.

“At the first shot, nobody knew what was going on,” Ichikawa said. After the second shot, Yamagami was attacked by the special police, who pinned him to the ground. His shirt lifted to reveal a black belt with a silver buckle. Like most people in the crowd, he wore a mask.

There was a pause of 10-20 seconds before Yamagami was attacked, said Takenobu Nakajima, who runs a printing company and was at the station to support the LDP.

By then, 67-year-old Abe was lying crumpled on the ground. Media footage showed blood stains on his crisp white shirt.

Ken Namikawa, the mayor of Tenri City in Nara, called into a microphone asking if there were any doctors or nurses in the crowd. A nurse ran over and joined the crowd of people serving Abe.

At least one person had a CPR.

Doctors later said Abe bled to death from deep wounds to his heart and the right side of his neck, despite receiving more than 100 units of blood in transfusions over four hours.

Ichikawa said he was struck by Yamagami’s face as he fired at the former prime minister.

“It was just a normal expression,” he said.

Reporting by Satoshi Sugiyama; Additional reporting by Sakura Murakami and the Reuters Tokyo bureau; Written by David Dolan; Editing by Nick McPhee

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