A Japanese father is demanding a murder charge after a man who jumped from an 11th-floor balcony survived the fall that crushed his daughter to death on a busy Nagoya street.
Around 1 a.m. on July 19, 23-year-old Tomoki Inaba was walking home with a friend through Nagoya’s Sakae district when 29-year-old Shinsei Taguchi leapt from the 11th floor of an apartment building and landed on her.
Inaba was rushed to a hospital and pronounced dead hours later from haemorrhagic shock. Taguchi lived. He was later discharged, arrested on suspicion of gross negligence resulting in death, and placed under psychiatric review to decide whether he can be held criminally responsible.
Her father, Kenji Inaba, rejects any framing of the death as a mere accident. He has visited Taguchi three times in detention, gathered more than 45,000 petition signatures, and is pushing prosecutors to upgrade the case to murder on a theory of willful negligence.
Sakae is a busy entertainment district. Inaba was on the street below when Taguchi came down from the balcony. The impact crushed her. Hospital staff could not save her.
The Daily Mail reported that Taguchi survived the same fall, left the hospital in August, and was then arrested on the gross-negligence suspicion. Psychiatrists are still assessing whether he understands enough to face full criminal accountability.
No completed murder charge appears in the available reporting. The live dispute is whether the current negligence case matches what the father says Taguchi admitted about the risk to people below.
Kenji Inaba did not leave the question to investigators alone. He went to see Taguchi in detention three times and pressed him on what he knew when he jumped.
In remarks carried by local coverage, the father described the exchange in plain terms.
Kenji Inaba said:
"He told me, "I'm sorry for what happened to your precious daughter", but honestly, anyone could say that,"
He went further on the core point that drives his campaign.
Kenji Inaba said:
"I asked him, "You jumped thinking you didn't care if there were people below, or if they lived or died, right?" And he replied, "Yes, that's right". He jumped without caring if he took someone with him. I absolutely cannot accept this being brushed off as an accident."
That account, if credited by prosecutors, is the heart of the father’s argument: Taguchi understood the danger to strangers on the street and jumped anyway. The family has also urged investigators to examine Taguchi’s claim that he has no memory of the incident rather than accept it at face value.
The family petition does not treat the jump as a private act that ended only in tragedy for the jumper. It ties the choice of place and height to foreseeable harm.
The petition states:
"Even if the suspect jumped with the intention of taking his own life, he should have understood that jumping from a high-rise building in a busy entertainment district could result in him striking and killing someone below,"
It continues:
"Such conduct, which puts innocent third parties at risk, must not be allowed to go unchallenged."
And it closes the plea this way:
"We earnestly hope that the justice system will confront the gravity of a human life and ensure that our daughter’s death is not dismissed as merely an ‘unfortunate accident'."
More than 45,000 people have signed on. The number does not decide the charge. It does show how widely the father’s refusal to accept a soft label has traveled.
After Taguchi left the hospital in August, authorities arrested him on suspicion of gross negligence resulting in death. That is the charging theory on the public record so far. Prosecutors have not been reported as filing a murder count.
Psychiatric evaluation is underway to settle criminal responsibility. Until that review finishes, the path to any upgraded charge remains unsettled. The father’s visits and the petition are pressure on that process, not a substitute for it.
Local outlets including Tokyo Reporter, TBS News, and TV Asahi have carried pieces of the timeline: Taguchi’s survival, the psychiatric assessment, and Kenji Inaba’s account of the detention conversations. The core sequence is consistent across those accounts. A man jumped. A young woman walking home died under the impact. The jumper lived and now faces a negligence case while doctors weigh his fitness for full blame.
Suicide attempts are acts of despair. They are not a free pass to treat bystanders as acceptable collateral. Taguchi chose an 11th-floor balcony over a crowded entertainment district in the small hours. Inaba was not a volunteer and not a participant. She was heading home.
Kenji Inaba’s demand is straightforward. If the suspect admitted he did not care whether people below lived or died, a negligence label may not capture the moral and legal weight of that choice. Prosecutors still have to test the father’s report, finish the psychiatric work, and decide whether the evidence supports murder or a lesser count.
The petition’s central warning stands either way: high-rise jumps into busy streets put innocent third parties in the blast radius. When one of those people dies, the justice system owes more than a shrug and an “accident” stamp.
A young woman walked home and never arrived. The man who came down on top of her lived to face questions. Those questions should match the cost she paid.
