Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe died this Friday following being shot in an attack perpetrated during an electoral act in Nara, western Japan, according to the Liberal Democratic Party, to which he belonged.
Abe, 67, was the victim of several shots while giving a speech in the street before the parliamentary elections held this Sunday in Japan, and his party reported his death following previously announcing the doctors in charge that he was in cardiorespiratory arrest.
The medical services of the Nara University Hospital announced at a press conference that Abe died at 5:03 p.m. local time (8:03 GMT) as a result of injuries sustained in several arteries and damage to the heart, and explained that he was already no vital signs on arrival at medical facilities.
During the approximately four hours that he was hospitalized in a center to which he was transferred by helicopter, doctors tried to stop his neck and chest bleeding and gave blood transfusions, without saving his life.
The detainee for the attack, Yamagami Tetsuya, is a 41-year-old unemployed man and former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Forces (Japanese Army), who was “dissatisfied” with the former president, so “he went to kill him,” they said. police sources to the local media.
Tetsuya, from the city of Nara, in western Japan, was arrested for attempted murder while holding a weapon with which he would have shot the former Japanese president twice.
According to sources from the Japanese Ministry of Defense, the alleged aggressor worked in the naval branch of the Self-Defense Forces, in charge of defending the archipelago, for three years until 2005.
The conservative leader was at a campaign event for the partial elections to the Upper House of the Diet (Parliament of Japan) that are held this Sunday, in which the PLD of Abe and the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, hopes to revalidate its vast majority.
Election rallies are usually held in Japan in the middle of the street and with few security measures, due to the low rate of crime and attacks with firearms typical of the Asian country.