17 January 2023 , 12:08
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Japan's second female criminal in history to be sentenced to execution has choked to death while on death row.
Miyuki Ueta lost consciousness after choking on a prison meal at a detention centre in Hiroshima at the weekend.
Japan's Justice Ministry confirmed Ueta's death on Sunday after she choked at around 4.20pm the previous day.
Staff at the facility tried to prise the food from Ueta’s throat before she was transferred to a local hospital.
She was confirmed dead three hours later at 6.55pm.
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The 49-year-old bar worker was convicted of drugging and killing two men in the city of Tottori to whom she owed debts back in 2009, with her death sentence finalised in 2017.
Ueta drugged truck driver Kazumi Yabe, 47, with sleeping pills and drowned him in the sea in April of that year.
The convicted killer lost consciousness at the Hiroshima Detention Centre (ANN News)Six months later, she drugged electronics store owner Hideki Maruyama, 57, and similarly threw him into a river.
She was arrested the following month in November after defrauding a woman, before detectives honed in on the suspicious deaths of men she had known or dated.
Ueta was initially sentenced to death in 2012 with the decision upheld in 2014 and again in 2017, making her the second ever woman in the country's criminal history to face the penalty and the 16th person post-war.
Ueta killed at least two men after drugging them and drowning them (ANN News)The first, serial killer Kanae Kijima who was convicted of poisoning at least three men which she attempted to disguise as suicides, remains on death row.
The son of Ueta's second murder victim, Hideki Maruyama, said he was "surprised" by the news of her sudden death.
He told NHK: "It's been 14 years since my father died, and I'm surprised that a death row inmate died in this way. Since then, I think it's been taking too long without being executed.
"Every day I put my hands on my father at the Buddhist altar in my house, and tonight I'd like to put my hands together and report today."
Ueta's death now brings the number of Japanese prisoners on death row to 105.
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