Police on Thursday declared a young British woman whose body was found in a bathtub filled with sand in suburban Tokyo died of suffocation.
TOKYO: Police on Thursday declared a young British woman whose body was found in a bathtub filled with sand in suburban Tokyo died of suffocation, as her distraught father vowed to see her killer brought to justice.
An autopsy also showed huge bruises on the face of 22-year-old English teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker, a police spokesman said.
"She was either strangled or smothered to death," the spokesman said of the autopsy.
Police are seeking to arrest Tatsuya Ichihashi, 28, who lived in the apartment where they found Hawker's bruised and naked body buried in a disconnected bathtub on the balcony on Tuesday.
Police issued an arrest warrant for the unemployed man for questioning about abandoning a body.
Following the autopsy, police said they handed Hawker's body on Thursday to her father and boyfriend, who had flown in from Britain. They are expected to take her remains for burial near Coventry, in central England.
Her father, William Hawker, vowed to press for justice over the death of his daughter, who finished university last year and came to Japan in October.
"My daughter did not come here to be murdered. She came here to help people. She came here to teach," he said late on Wednesday in a shaking voice, tears rolling down.
"I ... will not rest until the man who killed my daughter is caught," he said.
Jiji Press news agency reported Hawker met Ichihashi only a few days before her body was found.
"They were not in an intimate romantic relationship," the report quoted a police officer as saying.
Other media reports said Hawker had been stalked by the Japanese man.
Hawker apparently promised to provide an English lesson to Ichihashi outside of the privately run English conversation school in Chiba, east of Tokyo, where she worked, public broadcaster NHK reported.
The police spokesman said Ichihashi dashed out of the apartment when police officers visited to question him, dropping his backpack.
Jiji Press said the backpack had clothes, suggesting he may have prepared to run away.
The case comes seven years after the high-profile killing of another young British woman, Lucie Blackman, a bar hostess whose body was found dismembered in a seaside cave near Tokyo.
A former property developer, Joji Obara, is on trial in relation to Blackman's death. He has pleaded not guilty. A verdict is expected next month.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}