Teenage boy sets fire to his home after dad skims his wages
OSAKA -- A teenage boy arrested for setting fire to his own home here has told investigators that he committed the crime to vent his anger at his father who had skimmed his wages from his part-time job, police said Tuesday.
"I wanted to vent my anger because he took most of my monthly income of 100,000 yen," the 19-year-old part-time worker living in Higashiyodogawa-ku was quoted as saying during questioning. "I was annoyed when my father told me to earn more money."
The boy, whose name is being withheld under the Juvenile Law, used a cigarette lighter to set fire to a paper bag containing several sheets of paper in a second-floor room of his home on the afternoon of Jan. 17, local police said. The fire spread to the house and burned about 20 square meters of the structure.
The boy's father was away at work at the time of the incident. The boy disappeared after sending an e-mail to his father's mobile phone around the time of the blaze saying, "I'm going out."
The boy turned himself in to police on Sunday, accompanied by a lawyer, investigators said.