A 73-year-old man fatally stabbed his wife and daughter who were staying in a neurology hospital in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan, on Wednesday before apparently taking his own life, police said.
The police received an emergency call at around 2:20 p.m. about patients being attacked by the man, who was later identified as Kenichi Saito, at the hospital in Fujinomiya.
Saito's wife Chizuko, 72, and daughter Seiko, 40, had been hospitalized in separate rooms on the same floor.
The father was found with a knife protruding from his body in his wife's room by a nurse responding to an alarm, about 15 minutes after he had entered the hospital.
According to a family relative who lived near the Saito residence in Fuji, also in Shizuoka, the daughter became ill about 20 years ago. Her parents had been visiting her in the hospital frequently.
But the father began looking depressed after his wife was also admitted to the hospital around six months ago, the relative said.
The hospital, which opened in 1980, has conducted over 500 surgeries a year to treat brain hemorrhage, brain tumors and other neurological disorders, according to its website.
© KYODO