Kyoto court acquits Kudo-kai gang figure in 2013 shooting of Gyoza no Ohsho president

The Kyoto District Court on October 16 acquitted Yukio Tanaka (田中幸雄), 59, a senior member of a gang affiliated with the Kudo-kai, of murder and other charges over the 2013 shooting of Takayuki Ohigashi (大東隆行), president of Ohsho Food Service (王将フードサービス), which runs the Gyoza no Ohsho (餃子の王将) restaurant chain. Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment. Yomiuri reported that the presiding judge was Nishikawa (西川篤志). [ 19 , 20 , 23 , 24 , 26 , 27 ]

Sankei reported that the court said the bringing-in of the cigarette butts carrying DNA matching the defendant's could not be ruled out, and TBS reported the court found it difficult to exclude that they had been brought from another place. A Mainichi headline cited the court as saying another person may have framed the defendant, while Nippon TV reported the court found no proof of the crime. Sankei and TBS reported that the defendant nodded several times on hearing the verdict, and Sankei said he bowed to his defence team. Sankei later reported a comment from the defendant including the phrases "pursue the real culprit" and "go back to square one with courage". [ 31 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 38 , 40 ]

Ohigashi, then 72, was shot in the chest and abdomen at about 5:45 a.m. on December 19, 2013 in the car park in front of the company's head office in Yamashina Ward, Kyoto, Sankei reported. A joint investigation by Kyoto and Fukuoka prefectural police arrested Tanaka in October 2022 as the suspected gunman. [ 4 , 6 , 27 ]

With no direct evidence, prosecutors built their case on circumstantial evidence. They argued that two cigarette butts found near the scene, with saliva DNA matching the defendant's, were smoked while he lay in wait and stubbed out on wet ground, and could not have been brought in by a third party. They also pointed to a stolen motorcycle found near the scene on which gunshot residue was detected, a light car seen on security camera near where a scooter was stolen that they said the defendant had borrowed from a childhood friend, and camera footage of a person in a full-face helmet near Ohigashi's home the day before the shooting. [ 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 ]

The defence countered that the white ash produced by smoking was not found and that the butts had been left to frame the defendant, and said the camera images were too coarse to identify the car or the person. Yomiuri reported the defence raised the possibility that people inside the gang or a rival group had planted the butts. [ 2 , 4 , 8 , 27 ]

Although murder cases are normally tried with lay judges, the case was heard by judges only out of concern for their safety. At his first hearing in November last year, Tanaka said he was "definitely not the culprit", and he declined to be questioned. TBS reported that about 150 people queued for public gallery tickets on the day of the verdict. [ 6 , 8 , 13 , 27 ]