TOKYO (AFP) — Japanese police handed a US sailor to prosecutors on Saturday over the murder of a taxi driver in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, a local police spokesman said.
Yokosuka Police Department transferred the suspect, Olatunbosun Ugbogu, a 22-year-old Nigerian national, to the Yokohama District Public Prosecutors Office for indictment procedures, said the spokesman, who declined to be named.
The suspect was arrested on Thursday over the killing of taxi driver Masaaki Takahashi last month, the latest in a series of alleged crimes involving the US military that have sparked anger in local communities here.
The sailor has admitted stabbing the 61-year-old taxi driver near Yokosuka, the biggest US naval base in Japan, but says he did not intend to kill him, his lawyer said Friday.
The sailor's credit card was reportedly found in the parked taxi where the driver was discovered murdered. Reports said the taxi driver may have argued with his customer over the fare.
Later in the day, US Naval Forces Japan Commander Rear Admiral James Kelly met with the bereaved family of the taxi driver to offer an apology, news reports said.
"We regret that we lost a citizen in the nation Japan here in Yokosuka.... We are tremendously sorry that this has happened," Kelly was quoted by Kyodo News as telling reporters.
"We promise that we stand for the alliance, we stand for the communities we are in wherever, in Yokosuka, Sasebo or Atsugi," he said, referring to US naval bases in Japan.
In another incident, police in southern Okinawa prefecture, which hosts about half of the more than 40,000 US troops stationed in Japan, on Saturday arrested two sons of US servicemen over a taxi holdup, news reports said.
The two, both 19, are suspected of assaulting a 55-year-old taxi driver in Okinawa city on March 16 and robbing him of about 8,000 yen (79 dollars), the reports said.
The incident came just a day after Okinawa police arrested two other boys, aged 15 and 16, also sons of US soldiers, on suspicion of robbing and assaulting a taxi driver.
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