TOKYO (The Stellar News): A 32-year-old woman was sentenced to five years in prison for dangerous driving resulting in death by the Tokyo District Court on Monday.
According to the court ruling, Marisa Nakagawa, who worked at a bar in Kawasaki City, was driving a car being pursued by police when she hit and killed a woman pedestrian on May 20 last year, Sankei Shimbun reported. The incident occurred on National Route One in Tokyo’s Ota Ward at 12:50 p.m. About 15 minutes earlier, Nakagawa had been asked to stop her Mercedes by police after they had received a report about a car moving about suspiciously in Shinagawa Ward.
As police began to question her, Nakagawa took off. During the one-kilometer chase, Nakagawa went through several red traffic lights, then sped along a sidewalk for about 60 meters, hit another car and finally a concrete wall surrounding a garden outside an apartment building. A 34-year-old woman was walking by when she got caught up in the crash. The woman, Yu Takahashi, was rushed to hospital but died from her injuries.
Police said that at one point during the chase, Nakagawa was driving at about 120 kilometers per hour. Nakagawa was later arrested at a nearby apartment, where she had fled to on foot after the accident.
After her arrest, Nakagawa told police she remembered driving away while being questioned, but couldn’t recall the details of what happened after that. A subsequent medical examination revealed that Nakagawa had been taking stimulants.
During the trial, Nakagawa’s lawyer said that a man had injected her with the stimulants while she slept at his place the night before. However, police found a glass pipe on her after her arrest, and DNA from the pipe matched hers.
