Llanos Jaden Edwin, a sailor with the U.S. 7th Fleet, was charged Thursday by Japanese prosecutors with causing the death of a motorcyclist in a traffic collision in September near a gate at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan. (Joshua Magbanua/U.S. Air Force)
A U.S. Navy sailor was charged Thursday by Japanese prosecutors with causing the death of a motorcyclist in a traffic collision in September near a gate at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan.
The Yokohama District Public Prosecutors Office in Yokosuka city indicted Llanos Jaden Edwin, 22, on a charge of negligent driving causing death, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office said Thursday.
Edwin is assigned to the amphibious command ship USS Blue Ridge, base spokesman Justin Keller said by phone Thursday.
Yokosuka city police allege Edwin made an illegal right turn at 6:42 p.m. Sept. 18 at a five-way intersection near the naval base’s Womble Gate and collided head-on with a motorcyclist.
The motorcyclist, a Japanese man, also 22, from Yokosuka, was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital less than an hour after the collision, according to a police spokesman in February. A lawyer for the man’s family identified him Thursday as Tsubasa Ito.
Police on Feb. 12 recommended prosecutors charge Edwin in the fatal collision. In Japan, prosecutors make charging decisions following a police investigation.
Police in February said Edwin had been in U.S. military custody since the accident.
Some government officials in Japan may speak to the media only on condition of anonymity.
Kyoko Sugita, spokeswoman for the naval base, by phone Thursday declined comment on the case. “We don’t release information until the case is closed,” she said.
Ito, the motorcyclist, was on his way to work when he was hit, according to a statement Thursday from his family’s lawyer, Masahiko Goto.
“Our precious son Tsubasa was a kind son, who followed proper driving etiquette and drove safely,” according to a statement from Ito’s father that Goto provided. Goto did not identify the father by name. “Just thinking about why his life was taken in such an unreasonable accident brings tears to my eyes. I hope that the suspect will be punished severely without a suspended sentence, so that he will pay for this serious crime,” the father said, according to Goto.
Ito’s mother echoed that sentiment, according to Goto, who did not identify the mother by name.
“Just thinking about why his life was taken in such an unreasonable accident brings tears to my eyes,” she said, according to a statement the lawyer provided.
