IBARAKI (TR) – A man whose corpse was found along the side of a road in Toride City last week died due to strangulation, police have revealed.
Ibaraki Prefectural Police said last Friday that the death of Kazuhiko Kitada, a 59-year-old employee at a mahjong parlor in Abiko City, Ibaraki, is being treated as murder, reports TBS News (June 13).
Two days before, a male jogger, 66, found Kitada’s body wrapped in a futon near a cemetery in the Ina area.
Police said previously that the upper half of the body was bound with rope and the head covered with a towel.
In addition to revealing that Kitada had been strangled, the results of the autopsy conducted on his body showed that he died up to four days before the discovery.
Police also revealed that tire tread marks were found on the ground near the discovery of the body, meaning Kitada was probably killed in another location and transported by car.
A woman working near the mahjong parlor in Abiko told TV Asahi (June 14) that the parlor caught fire at around dawn on the day Kitada’s body was found.
Police are now investigating where the fire and Kitada’s death are connected.
