Professor Radiates Woman For Refusing Date
MIYAZAKI, Japan, June 17 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The Miyazaki District Court on Tuesday sentenced a former professor at the University of Miyazaki’s Faculty of Medicine to three years in prison, suspended for four years, for intentionally exposing a female research assistant to radioactive material.
Presiding Judge Junichi Shinohara said the defendant, 35-year-old Takuya Shimbara, misused radioactive material to vent his anger against the woman after she declined a date and began giving him the cold shoulder.
The judge, however, suspended the prison sentence, saying, “He has already been punished because he was dismissed by the university and that his career as a researcher had ended.”
Public prosecutors had sought a prison term of four years.
According to the sentence, Shimbara sprayed modest amounts of a solution of iodine-125, a radioactive isotope, on a lab coat, a desk and a chair the victim used in a university laboratory on Aug. 15 last year, exposing her to radioactive material and posing a danger to other university staff as well.
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