Police on Friday arrested a 35-year-old man for allegedly killing a high school girl in Hiroshima Prefecture in 2004 after matching his DNA and fingerprints to evidence found at the crime scene.

Manabu Kashima, a company employee of Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture, is suspected of stabbing to death 17-year-old Satomi Kitaguchi in her home in the city of Hatsukaichi around 3 p.m. on Oct. 5, 2004.

(The two-story house where victim Satomi Kitaguchi was killed.)

Hearing Kitaguchi's screams, her grandmother rushed to the entrance of the home with Kitaguchi's sister, where they found the suspect standing near the collapsed girl.

The sister was able to escape to a neighboring house, but the grandmother was stabbed nearly 10 times and was briefly in a critical condition.

Kashima has been referred to prosecutors over a different incident, according to investigative sources, at which point allowed the fingerprints and DNA were flagged.

Up until then, police had been working with a facial composite based on a description given to them by the murdered teen's sister, the shoe type based on footprints left at the scene, and reports of a motorcycle seen passing near the house at that time.

As no progress had been made in resolving the case, the National Police Agency had put up a cash award of 3 million yen ($27,960) and appealed to the public for information.

Tadashi Kitaguchi, 60, the victim's father, had said that his dream had been to go to a movie and have a drink with his daughter some day. In the years since her murder, he had worked hard to keep the case in the public consciousness, handing out flyers at shopping centers and starting a blog about his daughter's murder.