A man armed with a handgun locked himself in an apartment room in suburban Tokyo and fired nine shots out of a window noon Friday, apparently after shooting a gangster to death several kilometers away in Kanagawa Prefecture across the prefectural border, police said. One of the shots hit a police patrol car which rushed to the apartment in the city of Machida, around 30 km southwest of central Tokyo, Kyodo reported. No one has been hurt so far and no hostages appear to have been taken, the police said. The Metropolitan Police Department has deployed police officers around the site while the Tokyo Fire Department has mobilized five ambulances to prepare for possible emergencies. Investigators are positioned on both sides of the apartment building. A total of 44 primary and junior high schools near the scene kept students inside for a time but they went home with their parents in the evening. Residents around the apartment were evacuated on the instruction of the police. The police said the armed man is the occupant of the apartment who has been identified as Yuji Takeshita, 36, a member of a gang affiliated with the Kyokuto-kai underworld syndicate. While a senior member of the gang tried to persuade Takeshita via mobile phone to surrender to police, he was quoted as telling the senior member that he would kill himself in a sign of apology, according to the police. Takeshita eventually stopped responding to the phone calls. Earlier, a man was shot in the head at around 11:30 a. m. near a convenience store in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, and was pronounced dead shortly afterward at a hospital. He was identified as Madoka Yokoyama, a 37-year-old member of a gang also under the Kyokuto-kai syndicate. The man who shot the gangster fled from the scene in a car, which is owned by Takeshita, to the apartment in Machida, a few kilometers to the northeast, the police said. Meanwhile, a man robbed a farm bank near the site of the first shooting in Sagamihara at around 10:15 a. m. The man seized bundles of dummy banknotes and fled on a bicycle. The police are investigating a possible link between the robbery and the shooting death of the gangster.
