Irish Times

Oita girl dies from mom's baseball-bat beating

Mainichi Daily News
January 25, 2003

OITA -- A little girl lost her struggle for life at a hospital here Saturday, 11 days after her mother unleashed a brutal beating on her with a metal baseball bat, police said.

The 5-year-old girl, Kaori, had been in a coma in the hospital in Oita after her mother, 27-year-old Mika Narumi, brutally beat her, because she looked like her father.

"She looked like my husband, who I broke up with, and I got angry," police quoted Narumi as saying.

Police plan to upgrade the charges against Narumi to injury resulting in death.

Investigators said that between the end of November last year and Jan. 14 this year, Narumi beat her daughter with the metal bat, leaving her whole body covered in injuries.

On Jan. 14, she hit Kaori at her apartment in Beppu, Oita Prefecture, until the girl fell unconscious. She then called an ambulance but Kaori was left in a coma, Beppu Police Station officers said.

Narumi had lived alone with Kaori and her 6-year-old eldest daughter. She didn't abuse the eldest daughter, the officers said. (Mainichi Shimbun, Jan. 25, 2003)

© 2003 The Mainichi Newspapers Co.