A 53-year-old unemployed man has been arrested and charged with sneaking into an elementary school in Takaoka City in Toyama Prefecture, and stealing a large quantity of school satchels and other examples of school property.
He was first arrested and charged with stealing the satchel of a 7-year-old student on December 7th, but after that the police raided his home and found some 140 other items, such as musical instruments and bicycles.
The police chief said that the man had been using the same method to sneak into the school since 11 years ago and had been stealing kids’ things, and even stole students’ gym clothes from an inn.
While you might think that satchels and instruments make sense as things to steal because they have monetary value, the logic of the thief stops when you consider he also stole the curtain from a classroom, a plant the kids had been growing, and many other minor objects.
“I wanted to collect things related to elementary school students,” the culprit has confessed.
The police said that he liked kids in the low grades and wasn’t fussy about gender. Even though the things in the entrance would have been the easiest to steal, notably the thief did not take things like slippers or shoes.
The largest number of items seized were actually a type of sheet that he stole from a factory. He took 42 such sheets and was using them to grow plants on his balcony in the flower pots he stole from the students.
He was trying to recreate the atmosphere and world of the school in his own home.
