93-year-old Inmate over Ikebukuro Car Crash Dies

Jiji Press

17:38 JST, November 25, 2024

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — The 93-year-old inmate over a car crash in which a mother and her young daughter were killed in Tokyo’s busy Ikebukuro district in April 2019 has died of old age, it was learned Monday.

Kozo Iizuka, former head of the government’s now-defunct Agency of Industrial Science and Technology died on Oct. 26 while serving a five-year term for negligent driving causing death and injury in the accident, informed sources said.

In the high-profile accident, the passenger car that Iizuka was driving ran a red light and barreled into a crosswalk, killing Mana Matsunaga, 31, and Riko, 3. Nine others were injured.

“I pray from my heart for the soul” of Iizuka, Takuya Matsunaga, the bereaved husband of Mana, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “I want him to apologize to Mana and Riko if he can see them in heaven. At the same time, my heart aches because he had to die in prison.”

Matsunaga met with Iizuka in May this year at his prison. Asked if there was anything he wanted to tell elderly people in order to prevent similar accidents, Iizuka called on Matsunaga to tell them to surrender their driver’s licenses soon.