Cook's
crude abortion leaves woman, police seeing red
By
Ryann Connell
Hitoshi Yamashita is now awaiting trial after pretending to
be a top surgeon to lull a desperate woman into agreeing to
undergo a backyard abortion (or at least one in the Japanese-style
room of a buddy's home).
"The
victim (identified only as Ms. A) used her mobile phone to
contact an online bulletin board. She posted a message saying
that she was pregnant, couldn't legitimately go through an
abortion and begged for somebody to help her," a police
investigation insider tells Asahi Geino. "Yamashita contacted
the woman, telling her he was a gynecologist who had graduated
from top medical colleges in Tokyo and Sendai and offering
to perform the abortion. The woman believed him. They met
on Nov. 24 and went to the nearby home of a friend of Yamashita's
and Yamashita performed the operation in a Japanese-style
room there."
Yamashita's
procedure had ghastly results -- hardly an eye-opener considering
the 30-year-old from Niiza, Saitama Prefecture, has been a
cook for most of his life.
"Blood
was spattered all over the tatami mat room and you could still
see chunks of the woman's body fat scattered about the room,"
a reporter from a national daily tells Asahi Geino. "Yamashita
was not a licensed medical practitioner and his surgery was
deplorable. He didn't use anesthetic and kept the woman's
stomach opened up from 7 p.m. until midnight. He'd cut her
open with something like a scalpel, opening a gaping maw about
6 centimeters deep and extending 20 centimeters from the navel
down and spreading horizontally. Fortunately, Ms. A's uterus
wasn't damaged, but when Yamashita sewed her up, he did such
a bad job, the hemorrhaging and pain didn't stop, so his buddy
called for an ambulance to help the woman."
Yamashita
ran off before the ambulance arrived. However, he was soon
tracked down through mobile phone and e-mail records and arrested.
He soon admitted to the allegations laid against him of inflicting
bodily injury.
"He
said he'd always yearned to be a doctor and had dreamed of
one day performing surgery," the investigation insider
says. "As well as the bodily injury case, we're looking
into possible breaches of the Medical Practitioners Law."
Ms.
A was eight months pregnant at the time of the procedure,
too late by far to legally terminate a pregnancy.
"Ms.
A has a boyfriend, but they hadn't even talked about marriage
and she was getting worried," the hack says.
Yamashita's
neighbors suggest he was destined to cause trouble.
"He
went to a cooking vocational school as soon as he'd finished
junior high. He worked in a Japanese restaurant up until about
two years ago," one Niiza neighbor says. "He was
pretty stupid and never struck me as the type who'd be interested
in medicine."
Another
neighbor says that Yamashita was best known in Niiza for living
with his parents and riding around on his bicycle while chatting
away on an ever-present mobile phone.
A
woman in her 20s described him as being positively fearsome.
"Whenever
his eyes met those of a school student, he'd sort of follow
them around like some sort of stalker. He turned around and
leered at me one day on the bus," she says. "His
stares were really scary."
Perhaps
even more frightening was the relationship Yamashita has with
his parents, especially his mother.
"He
was perpetually clinging to his mom. I remember his mom once
coming to us to give us orders about how to cut his hair.
I used to see him and his mom out shopping every day and remember
thinking, 'that guy's besotted with his mom,'" a Niiza
hairdresser tells Asahi Geino. "I've heard he had a girlfriend
at one stage, but she fled to Oshima just to get away from
him. He used to ride around this really old bicycle he'd bought
about 10 years ago and then covered with all these decorations
and mirrors."
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