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Body Found in Kirishima River Identified as Missing 5-Year-Old

Police said DNA and forensic checks confirmed the child's identity and that investigators will probe how he came to be in the river.

Overview

  • Kagoshima Prefectural Police announced that the body recovered from the Amori River has been identified as the missing five-year-old boy from Yatsushiro.
  • The child vanished while his family used a private family bath at a hot-spring facility, and he was last seen inside the bathing area before family members moved to the dressing room.
  • Search teams recovered the body on the upstream side of a hydroelectric dam roughly 700 meters downstream from the facility, and police noted the remains were unclothed and about 115 centimeters tall.
  • Authorities have not disclosed a cause of death or any criminal charges and say they are continuing forensic work and inquiries into whether the child entered the river near the hot-spring site.
  • The boy's family lives in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto, and police said they will keep investigating to determine how the child came to be in the river and to complete postmortem examinations.