On Sunday, the official website of Georide, DIGITURBO’s music label that releases the music from Nitroplus titles, confirmed on Sunday that its producer Shingo Minamino had passed away after being attacked on the street in Osaka’s Shinsaibashi district. Minamino worked on the music of Kanako Itou and Super Sonico, to name a few. Minamino was visiting Osaka to manage Sunday evening’s “Georide 5th Anniversary Special Tour 2012″ live concert event at the Osaka Muse hall near the location of the stabbing.

At about 1:00 p.m., a female passerby made an emergency phone call about a stabbing in Shinsaibashi. The police arrived on the scene and discovered a man and a woman bleeding. The suspect had attacked the man (Minamino) first, then attacked a woman in her 60s about 30 meters (about 100 feet) away, and then returned to the male victim to stab him again. The two victims were taken to a hospital, but both succumbed to their wounds.

The police arrested a 36-year-old unemployed man that they identified as Kyōzō Isohi with no fixed address. According to the police, the suspect said he did not know the two victims. He reportedly said that he was thinking of committing suicide, but would kill someone with a knife he purchased near the scene of the crime and thus be executed. According to a source in the investigation, the suspect added that anyone would have sufficed as his intended victim.

This is very sad news indeed. Mikatan’s blog (the official blog of Good Smile Company) even made reference to this incident. RIP Minamino-san. Our resident Nitroplus fan Laevatein will especially miss you.

[via: ANN]