
Police in Yashio, Saitama Prefecture, have arrested a 25-year-old man for posting a false rescue request on the social networking site X after an earthquake hit the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture on Jan 1 this year.
Police said Ryodai Kanamaru, a company employee, is accused of posting the request at around 7 p.m., pretending to be a victim of the quake, NHK reported. He posted: “My family is trapped in our collapsed house.”
On Jan 2, police rescue personnel went to the site posted by Kanamaru, but found no collapsed houses. All residents in the neighborhood were confirmed to be safe.
Police said Kanamaru, who has been charged with obstructing rescue work by Ishikawa police, is suspected of having posted fake calls for help more than 10 times on Jan 1 by looking up real addresses on a map app on his smartphone. During questioning, he was quoted by police as saying, “I wanted to take advantage of the earthquake to draw attention to my posts and get a lot of people to respond.”
According to a company that analyzes social media, there were several thousand posts requesting rescue at the time, and many of the posts subsequently turned out to have been false. This caused confusion in rescue operations, with police and fire departments rushing to scenes where there was no one actually calling for rescue.
© Japan Today