Japanese mobster shoots Nagasaki mayor gangland style
Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Ito near his campaign headquarters gangland style. Ito received two gun shot wounds from behind Tuesday execution style by known criminal Tetsuya Shiroo who was subdued by police at the scene of the shooting.
The Nagasaki mayor was shot by the organized crime chief in an apparent rage after the Japanese City refused to compensate Shiroo for damage sustained to his car at a public works construction, Japanese media reported.
Ito, 61, was shot at point-blank range outside a train station near his headquarters, a Nagasaki police spokesperson said.
The Nagasaki mayor's death marked the fourth killing of a politician in Japan since World War II, when firearms became strictly forbidden to own.
One of the bullets that hit Ito pierced his heart and he died later a nearby hospital, Nagasaki officials report.
The shooter, Shiroo, is a known member of Japan's largest organized crime syndicate, Yamaguchi-gumi.
A Nagasaki police spokesperson told AXcess News in a telephone interview that Tetsuya Shiroo later confessed to shooting Ito with the intent to kill the Nagasaki mayor.
Nagasaki, best known for having been destroyed by an American atomic bomb in World War II, has had two mayor's shot in the last twenty years.
The prior shooting occurred in 1990 when then-mayor Hitoshi Motoshima was seriously wounded after saying that Japan's Emperor bore some responsibility for the Second World War.
The shooting of Ito had no political undertones, though Shiroo and Ito clashed once before when his car was damaged after driving over a pot hole in 2003 and tried unsuccessfully to get the City to pay for the damage.
Shiroo allegedly also believed that Ito was accepting bribes and had sent a letter to television broadcaster Asahi complaining about Ito's recent money scandal and public works projects, in which Shiroo claimed the Nagasaki Mayor was being paid off.
