Crime & Courts

U.S. Marine Nabbed in Okinawa for Allegedly Groping Woman

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo
The Okinawa prefectural police headquarters building

Jiji Press

12:10 JST, July 5, 2024

Naha, Okinawa Pref., July 4 (Jiji Press) — Japanese police Thursday arrested a 22-year-old private first class of the U.S. Marine Corps for allegedly touching the breasts of a woman in her 20s in Okinawa Prefecture.

Sean Patrick Sabol, who belongs to the Marine Corps’ Camp Kinser in the Okinawa city of Urasoe, was held at the site on suspicion of violating the prefecture’s nuisance prevention ordinance.

He is suspected of groping the woman over clothes at the stairway of a building in Naha, the capital of the southernmost prefecture, around 8:30 a.m. He has denied the allegations.

The suspect was drunk when he was arrested.

The arrest followed the recent revelation of a series of sexual assaults on women by U.S. military personnel in Okinawa, which is fueling anger at U.S. forces stationed in the prefecture.