The Yomiuri Shimbun
NAHA -- The 16-year-old son of a U.S. military serviceman has been arrested in Chatancho, Okinawa Prefecture, on suspicion of failing to stop at a police checkpoint that was set up after a taxi driver was robbed of money in the same town by two men believed to be non-Japanese, police said.
The police are investigating a possible connection between the two incidents.
According to the Okinawa prefectural police, at about 9:30 p.m. Sunday, two men got into a taxi in the downtown area of Chatancho, with one sitting in the front passenger seat and the other in the backseat. Several minutes later, the men allegedly asked the 55-year-old male driver to stop the car in a residential district, and then the man in the passenger seat pointed a knife at the driver. The men took a cash box containing about 10,000 yen and ran away, the police said. The taxi driver reportedly was not injured.
Following the incident, the prefectural police started investigating the incident as a suspected robbery.
At about 11:30 p.m., the high school student, who was driving a minivan, did not follow a police officer's order to stop his car at a checkpoint on National Highway Route 58, which was about one kilometer from the robbery scene. The boy also struck the parked police car with the vehicle he was driving, according to the police.
The student allegedly drove the minivan about one kilometer after breaking through the checkpoint. After driving down the wrong side of the road, the car crashed into a vending machine by the road and stopped, according to the police.
The student reportedly got out of the car and tried to run away, but police officers took him into custody. The minivan turned out to be a stolen car, according to the police.
(Apr. 7, 2010)
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