Kyoto Animation arsonist given death penalty over 2019 attack

A 45-year-old man was handed the death penalty on Thursday for setting a Kyoto Animation studio on fire in 2019 and killing 36 people in one of Japan’s deadliest mass murders.

The Kyoto District Court found Shinji Aoba guilty of setting the three-story building on fire because of a grudge he had against Kyoto Animation. He claimed the studio had stolen his ideas after it rejected his novels in an annual award contest the studio hosts. There is no evidence the studio plagiarized any of his work.

Aoba also sustained heavy burns over most of his body.