Tokyo: The Japanese police have found only one of the two bullets that fatally wounded former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a campaign speech on July 8, media said Friday.
Three weeks after the deadly shooting in the western city of Nara, police are still struggling to collect evidence left behind by the 41-year-old gunman on a traffic island on a public road, according to the public broadcaster NHK.
Yamagami Tetsuya, a former member of the Japanese navy, used a handmade gun to shoot Abe twice in the chest and neck. Doctors tried to resuscitate the veteran politician on the spot. He was rushed to a clinic where he was pronounced dead more than five hours after being shot.
The broadcaster said no bullets were found in Abe’s body. One bullet could have reportedly gone missing while doctors were massaging his heart in the street. Its absence made NHK question why police waited several days to start searching the scene of the shooting.
Yamagami told investigators he had decided to kill Abe because of his alleged ties to a religious sect that he claimed had bankrupted his mother. The group has denied having had anything to do with the late prime minister.
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