A Japanese woman sewed her roommate’s lips shut “with a needle and thread,” sending the victim rushing out into the streets with a hand-written sign reading “please help me.”
The 42-year-old victim was initially too scared to flee the house in the eastern prefecture of Ibaraki in Tokyo’s northeast because she was too terrified of her 49-year-old roommate, Masae Sakurai, according to reports.
But once Sakurai wasn’t home, the sewed-up woman managed to escape, put on a white mask to hide the gruesome sight and rushed to a nearby shop, NHK reported.
Unable to speak, the victim held up her handwritten help sign, prompting an employee to call police, NHK reported.
She then told police that Sakurai “became angry over a trouble and my lips were sewed,” according to the Telegraph.
Local media reported her mouth had been pierced with a needle several times, entering her skin underneath her nose and exiting through the bottom of her lower lip.
The threading was done in such a way that it passed through the inside of her mouth, which made it difficult to see the string.
It was not immediately clear how Sakurai (pictured above) managed to pull off the attack, nor what “trouble” angered her, but she was arrested on suspicion of assault.
The women had been living together since April, Kyodo News wrote.
People who know Sakurai told TV Asahi that she would often let people who ran away from home stay with her, and even helped them find jobs. One of her former coworkers told the outlet she had a penchant for “taking care of girls who have nowhere to go after reaching out to their parents.” People& Society