Police have arrested an 85-year-old man in western Japan for allegedly stalking an 80-year-old woman
TOKYO
Police
have arrested an 85-year-old man in western Japan for allegedly
stalking an 80-year-old woman he reportedly met when she shared a
hospital room with his now-dead wife, they said Monday.
Takeo
Nitta from Hashimoto, Wakayama prefecture, allegedly left several
telephone messages on the woman's answerphone in November, saying: "I'm
waiting outside your house. Let's go out."
Officers
warned him twice against harassment after receiving complaints from the
woman, but his behaviour allegedly escalated and on May 2 he is said to
have broken into her house, a police spokesman said.
Nitta
was arrested on June 10 on suspicion of violating anti-stalking laws,
the spokesman said, adding he had largely admitted the allegations.
In
a report last week, the Asahi Shimbun said the two had met when the
woman shared a hospital room with Nitta's wife several years ago. His
wife died last year, the paper reported.
The number of
crimes committed by the elderly in Japan is rocketing as they make up an
ever-larger proportion of its ageing society.
Government figures show the number of criminals aged 65 or older booked by police in 2011 had risen six-fold in two decades.
Most elderly crimes were shoplifting or theft, but violent crimes were also on the rise, statistics show.
The
number of Japanese aged 65 or over stands at around 32 million, making
up a quarter of the nation's 127-million population, an all-time high
and one of the highest proportions of elderly people in the world.
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