Okinawan teen suspected of killing Kadena High student to be tried as adult

Eddie Allshouse, an American high school student from Kadena High School was stabbed to death in November 2011 in Okinawa, Japan, police said. The 17-year-old was in a band called Shores, according to its Facebook page. The Okinawan teen who stabbed Allshouse received an 8-year sentence on June 22, 2012.

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — A Japanese teen will be tried as an adult and could face the death penalty if convicted of killing of a Kadena High School student with a sword in November, the Naha District Prosecutor’s Office said.

The 17-year-old suspect, whose name has been withheld by authorities, was indicted formally for the murder and transferred from family court to the Naha Detention Center on Friday, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said.

The teen was arrested in a Yomitan apartment where his friend, Edward Allshouse Jr., 17, the son of a U.S. civilian worker, was fatally stabbed in the chest with a replica sword during an argument over a woman, Japanese police said.

The suspect will be tried by a jury for murder, a charge that carries the possibility of the death penalty under Japanese law. No trial date has yet been set, the prosecutor’s office said.

Allshouse was a popular student and member of a local rock band. His death caused an outpouring of grief from the small Japanese-American community on Okinawa, with about 200 people attending his funeral, including the commander of the nearby Torii Station Army base.

Prefectural police said Allshouse was stabbed with the sword in the left side of his chest at about 5 a.m. on Nov. 26 at the suspect’s apartment in Yomitan and died about seven hours later at a local hospital.

The suspect, who was unemployed and living alone in the Takashiho district, told Okinawa police that the two were arguing over a woman and he attacked Allshouse, a police spokesman told Stars and Stripes.

The teen called an ambulance after the incident and was immediately apprehended at the site, police said.

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