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ASSOCIATED PRESS / THE PACIFIC DAILY
Chad Ryan Desoto
21
of Tamuning
A third person has died after being hit by a car during a rampage in guam’s tourist district that left two others dead and 11 people injured, officials said Thursday.
Spokesman Tony Muna of the Guam Visitors Bureau said that a 51-year-old man taken to Guam Memorial Hospital l in critical condition died Thursday morning, Guam time.
Authorities are not immediately releasing his name while a complaint filed against 21-year-old Chad Ryan De Soto is updated, Muna said.
De Soto, of Tamuning, is accused of plowing into several people with his gray Toyota Yaris late Tuesday as he drove onto a sidewalk and into a convenience store at the Outrigger hotel in the Tumon district. Authorities say he then got out of his car and started stabbing people he came across.
De Soto hurt six people with his car and eight with his knife, including two who died of their injuries, authorities said.
Muna said the 51-year-old victim was hit by De Soto’s car.
Muna says four victims remain hospitalized in the U.S. territory: a 76-year-old woman listed in "guarded" condition, a 70-year-old woman in stable condition, and two girls in stable condition — a 3-month-old and an 8-month-old. A 22-year-old woman in stable condition was transferred to a hospital in Japan, while six patients were treated and released.
Hospital officials reached Thursday referred questions to Muna.
A Guam judge ordered De Soto held on $2 million bail. The prosecution requested the bail after saying the suspect committed "heinous, extreme" violence rarely seen in Guam, a tropical island about 1,500 miles south of Tokyo that is heavily dependent on tourism.
Superior Court Magistrate Judge Alberto Tolentino appointed a public defender to represent De Soto.
A video of the brief court proceedings posted online by the Pacific Daily News shows De Soto, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, telling Tolentino he has no job.
Court documents posted by the newspaper say the two Japanese women stabbed to death were 81-year-old Kazuko Uehara and 29-year-old Rie Sugiyama.
Those injured with De Soto’s knife included Sugiyama’s 8-month-old son. The baby is hospitalized in stable condition, the newspaper reported.
De Soto told police he wanted to hurt as many people as he could, first with his car and then with his knife, according to a declaration filed by Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Quan.
De Soto is charged with two counts of aggravated murder, for which he faces 15 years to life in prison. He also faces a charge of attempted aggravated murder for using a knife to attack Sugiyama’s baby, and eight counts of aggravated assault.
It appeared that most of the people injured in Tuesday’s attack were Japanese tourists.
Guam is well-known for scuba diving, white beaches and historic World War II battle sites, and it depends heavily on tourism — particularly from Japan — for its economy.
Japanese people accounted for 73 percent of the 1.1 million visitors to Guam in the 2011 fiscal year, according to Guam Visitors Bureau data. South Koreans made up 13 percent, followed by 4 percent from Taiwan.
