The assailant in a knife attack in Kawasaki last week may have scouted the scene four days before he went on the stabbing rampage that left two dead and more than a dozen others injured, investigative sources said Monday.

A man who appeared to be Ryuichi Iwasaki, 51, was captured on the morning of May 24 by security cameras installed around the crime scene as well at nearby Noborito Station and Yomiuriland-mae Station on the Odakyu Line, which is the closest station to his home in the city's Asao Ward, the sources said.

Last Tuesday, Iwasaki committed suicide shortly after he attacked a group of Caritas Elementary School students and parents around 7:40 a.m. with 30-centimeter-long knives in each hand.

With police also having found that Iwasaki bought the knives in February at a mass merchandise retailer in Machida, Tokyo, they suspect the attack was planned well ahead.

The attack, which lasted less than 20 seconds, left dead Hanako Kuribayashi, an 11-year-old student, and Foreign Ministry official Satoshi Oyama, the 39-year-old father of a student at the school.

Iwasaki also injured 18 others, mostly schoolchildren.


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The elementary school held a sports event on May 25, a Saturday, and as a result was closed through the following Monday.

May 24 was the last regular school day before the attack, and many school children are believed to have been awaiting school buses near the site, just like the day of the incident.

The motive of the attack remains unknown even after the police searched his home in the city, just next to Tokyo, where he lived with his aunt and uncle in their 80s.

The relatives had told city officials Iwasaki had not worked for a long time and was becoming reclusive.

He mostly stayed in his room, hardly speaking to the couple, and ate meals prepared by the aunt alone. He possessed no computer or smartphone, according to the police.