May 17, 2021- 2:54 p.m.
A woman in Arizona is accused of killing her two young children with a meat cleaver after having an argument with her husband about moving to Japan, police said.
Tempe Police have charged 40-year-old Yui Inoue with two counts of first-degree murder after officers found the bodies of the children at an apartment in the 4100 block of S. Mill Avenue on Saturday.
Speaking at a press conference later that day, Tempe Police spokesman Sgt. Steven Carbajal told reporters that Inoue had driven to a nearby police station around 7 a.m. and flagged one of their officers, saying she had been “hearing voices, telling her to kill her kids.”
Officers arrived at the scene to find the bodies of the 7-year-old and 9-year-old children. Carbajal said that police had earlier responded to the apartment at around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday to reports of a domestic incident between a husband and a wife.
Carbajal said that the two parties had been separated and there were no indications that the children were in any danger.
Giving an update on Sunday, Tempe Police said Inoue threatened to stab her husband over an argument about money to move to Japan before allegedly attacking her children with a meat cleaver.
“There were significant injuries to their bodies including numerous lacerations, incised wounds and some amputations, consistent with a violent attack and defensive wounds,” Carbajal said, reported the Associated Press.
A meat cleaver blade was later found in a bag with blood-stained clothing inside the suspect’s vehicle.
“There were several pieces of information/evidence that led detectives to believe that the cleaver was the weapon used during this incident,” Carbajal said.
Inoue, who spoke to police via an interpreter, claimed she had no recollection of killing her children and only “woke up” to the situation after taking a bath.
The husband was not in the apartment at the time of the attack and told police he slept in his vehicle in the parking lot of a bank where he works following the argument with his wife.
Speaking before the suspect was arrested, Carbajal told reporters that even though their officers are “trained in seeing the worst,” the shock of seeing the crime scene was “elevated” by the fact the victims were small children.
