Woman served arrest warrant for murder of own newborn

Kumi Katsumi, 39, whose statement before her arrest on October 18 led police to find the body of her newborn in a cement-filled bucket at the nursery, has admitted to the allegation, they said. Her arrest last month on suspicion of abandoning the child's body.

The police believe she killed the girl by covering her mouth and nose in a minicar parked on a road in the island city on March 20 last year, the day she left a local hospital after delivery on March 12, and abandoned the body during the day at the nursery where she was working at the time.

When police investigators contacted her on October 17 following a report from a local welfare body that the girl was missing, she told them that she discarded the body, cemented in a metal bucket, placing it in a cardboard box, according to the police.

She also delivered a boy in April at a hospital in Fukuoka Prefecture, but left him behind, asking a Tsushima welfare officer to take him to a home for children, saying she could not take care of him, the municipal welfare office said earlier.