Zheng Yongshan
Locality of the murders
Born	1972 (age 51–52)

Zheng Yongshan (鄭 永善, born 1972), who also goes by the name of Mie Taniguchi (谷口 充恵), is a Mainland Chinese immigrant in Japan who was convicted of killing two children and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Murders

Zheng moved to Japan in 2004 and married a Japanese man. She lived near Tokyo, Japan.

On February 17, 2006, Zheng was supposed to drive her child, and two of the child's classmates, to school as part of a carpool arrangement. She stabbed the two classmates in the stomach and back with a 20-centimeter, thin, fish-cutting blade. One child, a girl named Wakana Taketomo, was stabbed 19 times; the other, a boy named Jin Sano, was stabbed 13 times. Both children were five years old. Zheng then dumped the bodies in Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture, a small town 300 km (190 mi) southwest of Tokyo. ^[1]

Recovery of evidence and sentencing

A passer-by discovered the body of Taketomo on a rural road; Sano's body was recovered in an irrigation stream. ^[2] After dumping the bodies, Zheng parked the car 56 km (35 mi) away from the crime scene; she still had the knife used in the killings in her possession. Taketomo was declared dead at 9:45am, shortly after she was taken to the hospital. Sano died around noon at the same hospital. ^[3] Prosecutors demanded death, but Zheng was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole after she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. ^[4]

References