Manhunt after Starbucks customer shot dead as he sipped coffee in shopping mall

15 January 2024 , 21:11

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Investigators work at the site of a shooting in Shikokuchuo City (Image: AP)

A manhunt has been launched after a Starbucks customer was shot dead as he sipped his coffee in what was reportedly a gang-related crime.

The male victim was shot in the chest yesterday at a shopping mall in Shikokuchuo city in Ehime prefecture on Japan’s southwestern main island of Shikoku, local police said in a statement. He was rushed to a hospital but later pronounced dead, police said. The Ehime police department is searching for a middle-aged man who fled the scene of the shooting.

A man who lives nearby said he heard a bang and thought it was a car crash. An employee at a car dealer in the same shopping mall said he saw an ambulance coming in about five minutes after the shooting. He told the Japan Times: "This area is far from a place where this kind of thing would ever happen."

The victim, believed to be a 49-year-old man, was seated in a terrace section of the Starbucks before he collapsed outside of the coffee shop, according to media reports. Police declined to confirm Japanese media reports that they are investigating the shooting as gang-related. Japan has strict gun control laws and its few gun-related crimes are often linked to gangsters. Homemade guns have been used or suspected in some high-profile shootings, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022.

In 2018, Japan, a country of 125 million people, only reported nine deaths from guns – compared with 39,740 that year in the United States, according to data compiled by the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. After the assassination, Nancy Snow, Japan director of the International Security Industrial Council, said the shooting would change Japan forever. She told CNN: " It’s not only rare, but it’s really culturally unfathomable. The Japanese people can’t imagine having a gun culture like we have in the United States. This is a speechless moment. I really feel at a loss for words."

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Rachel Hagan