Does anyone have any information on motives? Is this a disgruntled employee or maybe some one who objects to what they publish? This also proves one thing, we need common sense gasoline control laws.
Unconfirmed but from what I read on Twitter, some bystanders heard the arsonist scream something like "
you copied me!" which could mean that this studio may have plagiarized something of his (some artwork or story). But we're talking about a highly unstable individual so god knows if that's true.
According to NHK
[1], out of the 33 bodies found, 20 were piled on each other on the stairs between the 3rd floor and the roof.
So, after reading about the whole thing for the past few hours, i think this is how it all went down and kinda explains why the death toll is so high:
(First off,
this is how the building looks from the outside +
building plan[2])
• The arsonist arrives at the building with 40L of gasoline and holding knives
[3]. He then starts pouring gasoline on the 1st floor and the main staircases, all of this while yelling.
• Employees confront him, and then he proceeds to ignite the room and suddenly the 1st floor is on fire, and very quickly, fire on gasoline spreads fast. Combine that with highly flammable objects (almost each floor was filled with: wooden floor, a lot of paper/documents, wooden doors, paper walls, plastic, etc,) and before you know it, 1/3 of the building is on fire in a couple of minutes.
• People on the 1st floor panicked, rang the alarm and then ran away suffering some mild to severe injuries from the fire. The arsonist sees people running away from the 1st floor and starts pouring gasoline on them
[4]. The crazy fucker tries to escape, also suffers some injuries from the fire, but an employee follows him and then the Police captured him
[5].
• Once the rest of the people (on the 2nd floor and 3rd floor) found out what was going on (most likely, because of the smoke going up through the stairs, which you can see in the building plan above, the small circle is a spiral stair), it was too late. Escape routes can't be used by the people on the upper floors as the entire 1st floor is on fire. Breaking windows and jumping down was an option, and probably some escaped that way, but there's a chance that in a matter of minutes the windows, that were covered by blinds (as seen above in the pic outside of the building), got caught on fire too or were extremely hot...Plus, disorientation, coughing, panicking and low visibility due to thick smoke wouldn't allow you to find the window and/or try to break it.
• The trapped employes tried to go to the roof but couldn't since, according to the NHK report
[1], there's a high chance that people tripped and blocked the way up on the stairs since the door to the roof was unlocked (from the outside, unclear if from the inside as well). As hot air, toxic and thick smoke began to go up, it's very likely that suffocation was the main cause of death which explains why the authorities found so many bodies on the stairs between the 3rd floor and the stairs to the roof.
1. [source in japanese]
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20190718/k10011998101000.html2. [source in japanese]
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20190718/k10011997791000.html3. [...]
https://twitter.com/nhk_news/status/1151704299707273218 (Police taking pictures of backpack, knives, found near the building).
4.
https://twitter.com/you629/status/11516955672877957135.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7U7SgV6cOI (unconfirmed that the person on this video is the arsonist, but he was indeed caught by the authorities).
