Police arrested a 35-year-old man on Friday on suspicion of stabbing a 24-year-old woman to death in Kobe, people familiar with the investigation said.
The suspect, Masashi Tanimoto, was taken into custody in western Tokyo, the people said.
The victim, Megumi Katayama, was found bleeding from multiple stab wounds on the sixth-floor landing of an apartment building Wednesday. She was later confirmed dead.
NHK reported that she had been stabbed several times in the chest while inside an elevator at the building. Tanimoto confessed to the stabbing after being arrested, the report said.
“I don’t know if I had the intent to kill, but I definitely stabbed her,” he reportedly told authorities.
The suspect believed to have boarded a Shinkansen bound for Tokyo from Shin-Kobe Station at around 8 p.m. on the day of the stabbing, NHK said. He was later confirmed to have been at JR Okutama Station in western Tokyo on Friday, with authorities arresting him on a road in the town of Okutama with cooperation from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.
