A Japanese woman who was sentenced to death for killing two men choked to death in her cell while eating prison food.
Miyuki Ueta, 49, used to work at a bar. On Saturday afternoon, she lost consciousness while eating at the Hiroshima jail.
Guards tried to get the food out of her throat and did other things to help her, but less than three hours later, Ueta was pronounced dead at a hospital.
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The prisoner was said to have been taking medicine for a number of health problems and had already fallen over while eating a week earlier. In 2017, the country’s Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that Ueta should be put to death.
She bore “grave criminal responsibility” after carrying out the premeditated and “cruel crimes based on firm intentions to kill,” the top court said.
The report said that in 2009, Ueta gave 47-year-old truck driver Kazumi Yabe drugs and then drowned him in the sea. Later that year, she gave the 57-year-old owner of an electronics store drugs and had him drown in a river.
She killed them to avoid paying back the money she owed to both of them, according to the Japan Times.
During the trial, Ueta insisted that she was not guilty.
After hearing about her death, Maruyama’s son said he was “surprised that a death row inmate died in this way,” the Daily Star reported.
“I think it’s been taking too long for her to be executed,” he added.