AOMORI -- Two doctors at a hospital in the northeastern Japan city of Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, were arrested Feb. 14 for allegedly trying to conceal the murder of a patient by his roommate by falsifying the death certificate of the victim instead of reporting the incident to the police.

Aomori Prefectural Police arrested Takashi Ishiyama, 61, the director of the medical corporation operating Michinoku Memorial Hospital, and Tetsu Ishiyama, 60, the victim's attending physician at the hospital, on suspicion of harboring a criminal.

Sources including the prefectural police explained that a nurse on patrol found 73-year-old Seietsu Takahashi, who had been hospitalized, bleeding on his bed late at night on March 12, 2023, and he died the following day. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was injuries to the head and face. Subsequently, a male patient in the same hospital room was arrested for allegedly killing Takahashi by means including stabbing his face with a toothbrush, and was later indicted.

The two doctors are accused of falsely listing "pneumonia" as the cause of Takahashi's death on the certificate while knowing at the time that he was murdered.

According to its website, Michinoku Memorial Hospital has eight departments, including internal medicine and psychiatry, with 413 beds. The operating medical corporation, Kyorinkai, based in Tokyo's Meguro Ward, runs hospitals and elderly care facilities in the Tohoku region, Tokyo and the Tokai region.

(Japanese original by Yushi Ezawa and Shintaro Matsumoto, Aomori Bureau)