Policeman, woman badly injured after being hit by train in Tokyo

http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/398339

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 07:03 EST

TOKYO — A police officer and a woman were hit and badly injured by an oncoming train near Tokiwadai Station on the Tobu Tojo Line in Tokyo's Itabashi Ward at around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday after he apparently tried to rescue her from the tracks, police said.

Police Sergeant Kunihiko Miyamoto, 53, remains unconscious and in a critical condition due to skull fractures, and the woman, who appears to be about 40 years old, is also badly injured with hipbone fractures but is conscious, the Tokyo Fire Department said.

The accident took place at a crossing near the station. The woman walked onto tracks beyond a crossing gate, and the officer, who was stationed at a "koban" police box nearby, tried to get her off the tracks before an express train hit them, police said.

Shortly before the accident, a passerby notified the officer at the koban that a woman was on the tracks. The policeman dragged her from the crossing and brought her to the koban, but she ran away to the crossing again, according to police.

Police quoted the woman as saying, "I don't mind getting killed," when she was dragged from the tracks.

Damn emos

To paraphrase Dennis Leary ...

"kids getting influenced by messages in music then killing everyone and themselves .... where's the problem in that ?"

"That's an economic solution people , its called natural selection ."

Deceased policeman to be honored for trying to save woman on train tracks

http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/398944

Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 07:47 EST

TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to confer a special award on a policeman who died Monday after being hit by a train in Tokyo last week while he was trying to rescue a woman on the tracks, officials said Tuesday. Abe praised Kunihiko Miyamoto, 53, a police sergeant at Itabashi Police Station in Tokyo, for "having a strong sense of justice and trying to save the woman from his firm will to fulfill his duties."

Miyamoto "deserves to be urgently honored for being engaged in life-threatening public duties and being killed in the line of those duties," Abe said. Miyamoto died Monday afternoon at a Tokyo hospital after being in critical condition with a fractured skull. The 39-year-old woman the policeman tried to save was badly injured, with hipbone fractures, but there is no immediate threat to her life, according to the Tokyo Fire Department.

Bugger, I was hoping that he was going to make it. Japan needs more people willing to take action to solve problems within their society.

The poor guy was probably some dedicated (read: poorly paid) long-service cop who had been arsed to some dingy police booth in time for his retirement by the system, who thought "what the heck" when deciding whether to save the woman or not. The worst that could happen: he'd die and become a hero, thus raising the payout to his widow and family.