TOKYO, 11 July 2022, (TON): Japanese went to the polls Sunday in the shadow of the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, gunned down while making a campaign speech for the governing party that cruises to a likely major victory.

Police in western Japan sent the alleged assassin to a local prosecutors’ office for further investigation toward pressing murder charges, the day after a top regional police official acknowledged possible security lapses that allowed the attacker to get so close and fire a bullet into the still-influential former Japanese leader.

In a country still recovering from the shock, sadness and fear of Abe’s shooting, the first of a former or serving leader to be assassinated in postwar Japan, polling started for half of the upper house, the less powerful of Japan’s two-chamber parliament.

Abe was shot in Nara and airlifted to a hospital but died of blood loss.

Police arrested a former member of Japan’s navy at the scene. Police confiscated his homemade gun and several others were later found at his apartment.