Two accused perverts make a break for it by running along Tokyo train tracks on the same day.
Tokyo’s rail lines are easily the best way to get around the city. However, two very important things to remember when using them are, one, you should be inside a train, and two, you shouldn’t be on the run after being accused of a heinous crime.
Ordinarily those are guidelines most everyone abides by, but July 5 was an exception. Shortly before 8 p.m., a woman on a platform at Tokyo’s JR Shibuya Station said that a man was taking voyeuristic pictures of her. When a police officer approached the man to ask what he was doing, he jumped down onto the tracks of the Yamanote Line and started running in the direction of Harajuku.
Like at a lot of rail hubs in congested downtown Tokyo, Shibuya’s tracks are elevated as they come out of the station, and the man quickly found himself out on the open air of a viaduct. With the police officer closing ground, the man quickly hoisted himself up onto the edge of the bridge and over the side, doing a half rotation before belly-flopping onto the concrete roughly two stories below.
▼ Video of the fall, which the man survived
https://youtu.be/KgRrcyQEi_w#t=15s
▼ The bridge, which can be seen here, is right next to the scramble intersection plaza with the famous statue of Hachiko the dog.
The man broke multiple bones in the fall, and doctors estimate it will take him at least three months to make a full recovery. The police, meanwhile, are waiting for his condition to improve before questioning him.
Strangely, a similar incident had taken place just a short distance away from the Shibuya fall a mere 12 hours earlier. At a little before 8 a.m., a man was accused of groping a woman on a Toyoko Line train. Both the man and woman exited the train at Nakameguro Station, just two stops away from Shibuya Station. In this case, the woman informed a station attendant, and when the employee approached the man with the accusation, he too jumped onto the tracks and began running south, away from downtown.
▼ There’s a loud siren blaring, so you might want to turn down your speakers.
https://youtu.be/mJsy01lTS6Y#t=21s
Seeing as how station attendants aren’t trained to risk life and limb like police officers are, the employee didn’t give chase, and the man, who appears to be a separate person than the one who fell from the bridge in Shibuya, escaped, ostensibly having found a less bone-shattering way to get down to the street. However, given the Japanese police’s prowess with analyzing rail company security footage, odds are karma is coming for him soon enough too.
Sources: TBS News via Hachima Kiko, Yahoo! Japan News/FNN Prime Online via Jin
Top image: Wikipedia/Kakidai
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