Zheng Yongshan
 | This article needs to be updated. (September 2010) |
Zheng Yongshan | |
|---|---|
 locality of the murders | |
| Born | 1972 (age 51–52) |
Template:Chinese name Zheng Yongshan (鄭 永善, born 1972) is a Chinese immigrant who also goes by the name of Mie Taniguchi（谷口 充恵) and lived near Tokyo, Japan. She moved to Japan in 2004 and married a Japanese man.
Murders
On February 17, 2006, Zheng was supposed to drive her child and two of the child's classmates to school as part of a carpool arrangement. She stabbed the two classmates in the stomach and back with a 20-centimeter thin fish-cutting blade. Of the classmates, a girl, Wakana Taketomo, was stabbed 19 times; a boy, Jin Sano, 13 times. Both children were five years old. Zheng then dumped the bodies in Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture, a small town 300 kilometers southwest of Tokyo.[1]
Recovery of evidence, and sentencing
A passer-by discovered the body of Taketomo on a rural road; Sano's body was recovered in an irrigation stream.[2] After dumping the bodies, Zheng parked the car 56 kilometers away from the crime scene. She still had the knife used in the killings in her possession. Taketomo was declared dead at 9:45am shortly after she was taken to the hospital. Sano died around noon at the same hospital.[3] Prosecutors demanded death, but Zheng was sentenced to life imprisonment after she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.[4]