Prison term upheld for Japanese psychiatrist for fatal seizure-caused car crash

February 27, 2018

The Tokyo High Court upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced a psychiatrist in Japan to five years in prison for killing a woman and injuring four others in a 2015 epilepsy-caused car crash.

The court dismissed an appeal by 56-year-old Shoichiro Kaneko, with Presiding Judge Kazuyuki Okuma saying, "The defendant deserves severe blame for having his driver's license renewed without declaring his chronic illness, despite having been warned about it by his doctor, and continuing to drive a car."

Kaneko lost consciousness while driving out of an underground parking lot and his car plowed into pedestrians and ran across a sidewalk into a storefront on Aug. 16, 2015.  The incident resulted into the death of a 41-year-old pharmacist, Toshiko Ebata, while severely injuring four others.

SOURCE: "Prison term upheld for psychiatrist for fatal seizure-caused car crash," Japan Today, 23 Feb 2018, https://japantoday.com/category/crime/prison-term-upheld-for-psychiatrist-for-fatal-seizure-caused-car-crash.