Mother and daughter seriously injured in Japan after being stabbed by teenager who wanted to be “executed”

A mother and her daughter have been seriously injured after a knife attack perpetrated last Saturday night in Tokyo by a teenager who has confessed to police that she wanted to receive the death penalty.

The teenager, who was arrested on Saturday at the scene on suspicion of attempted murder, has been identified as a 15-year-old high school student from Toda, Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo.

According to initial investigations, reports the official Kyodo news agency, the young woman attacked a 53-year-old woman and her daughter, 19, with a kitchen knife in the Shibuya district.

The mother and daughter are critically injured but their lives are not in danger. The daughter, in particular, suffered a stab wound to the back more than 10 centimeters deep, according to the police report released Sunday.

The young woman has confessed that she attacked the couple as a “training” to see if she was capable of killing a person, as she had plans to kill her mother, according to investigation sources, and receive as punishment the death penalty.

The death penalty is criminalized in Japan and is only applied in extreme cases of aggravated murder, treason or kidnapping resulting in death. Since 2000, 118 inmates have been executed in Japan by hanging.