Man arrested over murder of Vietnamese girl in Japan

A man in his 40s was arrested Friday in connection with the murder of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl whose body was found last month in Japan, local investigation sources said.

A man in his 40s was arrested Friday in connection with the murder of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl whose body was found last month near a drainage ditch in Chiba Prefecture northeast of Tokyo, Mainichi Japan Newspaper cited investigative sources.

According to Asahi Newspaper, the arrested man is Yasumasa Shibuya, 46, who was a real estate dealer living near the victim's house.

The arrest of the man concerns the abandonment of her body, not the murder itself, the Mainichi Japan cited investigation police as saying. The man's DNA matched a sample police collected at a crime scene.

Yasumasa Shibuya has been accused of dumping the body of a Vietnamese girl, 9, who went missing last month (TBS News)

Police found the naked body of Le Thi Nhat Linh, a third-grade elementary school pupil living in Matsudo, Chiba, in a grass field in Abiko, also in Chiba, on the morning of March 26.

Police investigators examine the scene where the body of a girl was found, in Abiko, Chiba Prefecture, on March 26, 2017.

The police suspect Linh's body was dumped at the spot after she likely died of suffocation. The girl was apparently strangled elsewhere as there were no signs of a struggle in the grass field.

Linh went missing on the morning of March 24 after she left for school on foot. Her home and school are approximately 600 meters apart.

Linh had been living with her Vietnamese parents and younger brother in Matsudo since moving from Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, in December 2015.