Asami Nagakiya (1985–2016) was a Japanese musician, a

steel pan The steelpan (also known as a pan, steel drum, and sometimes, collectively with other musicians, as a steelband or steel orchestra) is a musical instrument originating in Trinidad and Tobago. Steelpan musicians are called pannists. Descriptio ...

player, who traveled regularly to Trinidad and Tobago to perform for the annual Carnival celebrations. She was found dead, in a case determined by the coroner to be murder by strangulation, on 9 February 2016, in a park that hosted Carnival activities, in the capital, Port-of-Spain.

Biography

A 30-year-old musician, a

player from Sapporo, Hokkaido,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, Asami Nagakiya was a regular to Trinidad's Carnival. She also played in several carnival bands and studied music at the

Senzoku Gakuen College of Music is a private educational institution in Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan. The institution operates a school of music, a junior college, primary and secondary schools, and a kindergarten. The first Senzoku Gakuen school, the Hiratsuka Sewing School f ...

Death

Nagakiya was found dead in Queens Park Savannah,

Port of Spain Port of Spain (Spanish: ''Puerto España''), officially the City of Port of Spain (also stylized Port-of-Spain), is the capital of Trinidad and Tobago and the third largest municipality, after Chaguanas and San Fernando. The city has a municip ...

dressed in a "two-piece masquerade outfit", on

Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday is a holy day of prayer and fasting in many Western Christian denominations. It is preceded by Shrove Tuesday and falls on the first day of Lent (the six weeks of penitence before Easter). It is observed by Catholics in the Rom ...

morning. The attire was further described by witnesses as being yellow, a bikini, and bejeweled in the fashion of Carnival costumes. The park in the capital, Port-of-Spain, is a location that hosts "major carnival parades and events", and reports varied as to the discovery of the body there (on Wednesday morning, either by "workers cleaning the park following... hecelebrations" or by bystanders that included a homeless man. On the next day (Thursday), the coroner’s office reported that the death had been by strangulation, and that the body had been "slashed on her arm". No mention was made in that report regarding signs of sexual abuse. As of 12 February, the death was being investigated as a murder, and as of that date, there were no named suspects for the crime. In March 2021, Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard announced that the case had been closed, concluding that the murderer was a man named David Allen who had been killed by police in December 2016.

Resignation of mayor of Port of Spain

On February 16, 2016, mayor Raymond Tim Kee of Port of Spain resigned from his office. The resignation came following outrage over controversial comments he made a week earlier, soon after Nagakiya's death. His comments referred to the responsibility of women in preventing their own abuse. Kee was succeeded by deputy mayor Keron Valentine.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nagakiya, Asami 1985 births 2016 deaths Japanese women musicians Japanese murder victims 21st-century Japanese musicians Steelpan musicians Trinidad and Tobago musicians 2016 murders in North America February 2016 crimes in North America Murder in Trinidad and Tobago Japanese people murdered abroad Violence against women in Trinidad and Tobago