Fifteen Injured in Knife and Chemical Attack at Japanese Rubber Factory

TOPSHOT - A police officer adjusts a cordon tape at a rubber factory run by Yokohama Rubbe
Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP via Getty Images

Fifteen people were injured severely enough to require hospitalization in a bizarre attack on a rubber factory in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture on Friday. A lone suspect was arrested for attempted murder in a rampage that included eight stabbings and seven people injured by a “spray-like liquid.”

The local fire department reported receiving an emergency call from the Yokohama Rubber Company in the city of Mishima at roughly 4:30 p.m. local time. The call said “people were stabbed by someone,” and that the attacker also sprayed some of his victims with a liquid.

The liquid appears to have been bleach. Exposure to the substance was enough to send several victims to the hospital. By Friday afternoon, five of the stabbing victims were reportedly still hospitalized in serious condition.

The suspect was identified as a 38-year-old man who was “wearing what appeared to be a gas mask and was armed with a survival knife,” according to Japanese media sources quoted by CBS News.

The suspect is believed to have “ties to the factory,” which employs about a thousand people and produces tires for passenger vehicles.

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