THE TWO MEN arrested in connection with the death of Wexford student Nicola Furlong in Tokyo have been charged in relation to an alleged attack on her friend.
Twenty-one-year-old Furlong, a DCU student from Curracloe in Wexford who was studying in Japan for a year, was pronounced dead after she was found in a hotel room on Thursday morning.
She and another Irish girl had attended a Nicki Minaj concert in the city, and reportedly missed the train home after the event.
Kyodo news agency has reported that the two girls were approached by two American men in the train station, who offered to take them back to the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku.
The Mainichi newspaper reports that footage from a taxi shows that the men were touching Furlong’s 21-year-old friend in the vehicle. The men are also alleged to have given alcoholic drinks to the girl. Both have now been charged with assaulting her.
The men, aged 19 and 23, took the young women to the hotel, and it’s believed Nicola Furlong was in a room with the 19-year-old when a guest complained of a loud noise coming from the room in the early hours of Thursday morning. Japan Times reports that Furlong was found unconscious and was later pronounced dead in hospital.
An autopsy indicated that she may have been strangled.
A DCU representative has travelled to Tokyo in order to assist with proceedings there, while it’s believed that the family of Nicola Furlong’s friend have also travelled to Japan.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say