Overview
- Investigators plan to send documents to prosecutors as early as January 21 on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in death.
- The case concerns the death of trainee firefighter Taiga Okamoto, 26, who was rescued after a treading‑water drill on July 9, 2024 and died eight days later from drowning‑related hypoxic brain injury.
- The exercise at the Sogo Nishi Civic Pool involved 52 recruits in a 3.3‑meter‑deep pool, with 18 instructors assigned, including two divers underwater, eight on the surface, and eight poolside.
- A city review concluded the training plan was prepared by staff without required qualifications, flotation devices were not placed on the surface, and monitoring of Okamoto was insufficient.
- The report urged measures such as paired safety checks, limits on the number entering the water, and skill‑based staging, and noted similar past incidents in Shizuoka in 2014 and Yamaguchi in 2020.