By Micheal Chukwuebuka, Reporting
JAPAN police has ended an eight-hour standoff with a gunman at a post office on Tuesday by arresting the suspect after two hostages were freed safely.
Authorities believe the attack could be related to an earlier shooting at a hospital.
Stonix News gathered that the man had entered the post office with a gun in Warabi, north of Tokyo, about an hour after the hospital shooting in which two people were wounded in the nearby city of Toda.
Police said they captured the gunman when they stormed into the building, about an hour after second of the two postal staff who remained in the building had escaped unharmed.
According to reports, the other hostage had walked out safely two hours earlier.
Authorities are investigating the hospital and post office attacks together because of a possibility they are related.
The suspect, a jobless resident of Toda, has been identified as Tsuneo Suzuki, 86.
The 86-year-old man allegedly entered the post office and took two female staffs in their 20s and 30s at gunpoint, while demanding police officials arrange a meeting with an unidentified person.
Stonix News learnt that in the early hours of Tuesday, a doctor in his 40s and a patient in his 60s were wounded after blasts resembling gunshot were heard outside a general hospital in the city of Toda, north of Tokyo.
Police said the victims were both conscious and their wounds are not life-threatening.
Police have urged residents near the post office to take shelter at a facility set up by the authorities.
About 300 children from a nearby school who usually walk home were taken home by bus as a precaution.
Source – ABC NEWS
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