Usage of 性 as a suffix in 事件性

Question

I received another tweet from 毎日新聞 this morning (quite sad actually). What bothered me, aside from the news, was the usage of 性 in the sentence:

関係者によると、事件性はないといい、23日未明に病院で死亡が確認された。

I know that 事件 translates as event and that 性 is a suffix that expresses condition or quality as in 可能性 or 重要性. I'm thinking that 事件 refers to criminal activity. So does this sentence mean that the event was not criminal in nature?

Answer 1

Your guess is right. "事件性がない(=not incidental)" means that it is not a crime. The article tells us that the deaths in this case would not have been caused by a crime. If we see the words "事件性がある(=incidental)" in an article, we infer that any circumstantial evidence shows someone's malice.