Tells woman that “There is no way for you to save the parakeets except to come home.”

On February 7, in the hours between 1 and 2 a.m., a 20-something woman in the town of Nanyo, Yamagata Prefecture, received a series of messages via a messaging app on her phone. The messages all came from a 26-year-old man who she was acquainted with.

The police have not publicly disclosed the exact nature of the pair’s relationship, but it would seem that the two were perhaps living together, or at least that the man had gained entry to the woman’s home and she knew that he was there, given that one of the messages the man sent demanded that the woman “come home,” and in an attempt to force her to comply with his demand, he’d taken hostages, messaging her that:

“There is no way for you to save the parakeets except to come home.”

The parakeets in question were the woman’s pets, and apparently she had a quartet of the birds, as in a follow-up text the man declared “It’s hard to say no to a friend, so there are four lives that will end.” At some point he softened his stance somewhat, or at least put on the air of being willing to do so, writing that “If you apologize over the phone right now, I’ll spare the parakeets.”

However, despite the man’s threats of criminal violence, his desire to see the woman that night went unanswered. Instead, he got to see the police, as the woman contacted them about the intimidating text messages, and they were the ones who paid him a visit that evening, placing him under arrest on charges of forced coercion.

While the woman, thankfully, appears to have been unharmed, sadly the same has not been confirmed for the birds. In addition to not publicly commenting on the man and woman’s relationship, the police said they were not responding to questions about whether or not the parakeets were safe. Considering that there isn’t really any readily evident reason why investigators would withhold such inconsequential but reassuring information as “Yes, the birds are all doing OK,” it’s likely that at least one of them didn’t make it out of the incident unscathed. If that is the case, hopefully justice will be served, as it was last year when a man was convicted of animal cruelty after kicking creatures to death on Japan’s rabbit island.

Source: TBS News Dig, Livedoor News/TUY News Dig via Jin
Top image: Pakutaso
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