A police officer in Saitama Prefecture is in critical condition after he took a colleague's handgun and shot himself in the head, the prefectural police said. The officer was being restrained at the time.
The prefectural police identified him as a 37-year-old sergeant major assigned to the Kasukabe police station. The shooting happened at around 10 a.m. on Wednesday at a waste treatment facility in Koshigaya, Saitama Prefecture.
Officers were subduing the man, who was behaving violently, when he seized a pistol from a colleague, according to the prefectural police. He then turned it on himself and lost consciousness.
The prefectural police are investigating the circumstances, including how a man being held by officers came to be in possession of a service weapon.