Japanese Homeless Woman Who Lived in the Closet of a Stranger’s House for a Year Arrested

A Japanese homeless woman who lived in the closet of a stranger’s house for a year without his knowledge is arrested.

A Japanese homeless woman who lived in the closet of a stranger’s house for a year without his knowledge was detected and arrested Thursday.

She had been making herself comfortable found in a flat storage space only just big enough for a person to squeeze into lying down. How she managed to sneak in or keep coming in and going out for a month remains a mystery.

The 57-year-old man who was living alone there, or so he thought, in the western city of Fukuoka was first puzzled when food kept in his refrigerator mysteriously disappearing.

Determined to get to the bottom of it all, he installed a security camera and called the police when he saw images of someone walking around his home while he was out. He presumed it was a burglar.

However, when the police arrived they found the door locked and all windows closed, news agency AP reports.

"We searched the house ... checking everywhere someone could possibly hide," police spokesman Hiroki Itakura. "When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, nervously curled up on her side."

The woman, named as 58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa, told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man's house about a year ago when he left it unlocked.

She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and even took showers, Itakura said, calling the woman "neat and clean."

"She seems to have lived there for about a year, but not all the time."

Source-Medindia
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