The essentials A few hours after the bloody shots were fired at a police officer in distress, the country is in shock.
Heartbroken families mourned the loss of their missing people, mostly children from a kindergarten, in a rural province in northern Thailand on Friday, October 7. A former police officer armed with a 9mm pistol and a long knife killed 37 people Thursday, including 24 children — 21 boys and 3 girls — during a homicidal trip starting at a kindergarten in Na district, according to the new police count sound began. around 12:30 p.m
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Attack in a kindergarten in Thailand: a man kills 37 people including 23 children, then kills his family and commits suicide
He then went into the street and tried to run over passers-by until he got to his house, “not far” from the kindergarten, according to police. He then killed his wife and their young boy before killing himself in the early afternoon, about two hours after the murder began.
“Incomprehensible”
That Friday, silence reigned around the kindergarten where one of the worst murders in the kingdom took place, occasionally broken by the sobs of families and the commotion of officials in white suits and black armbands. In the morning, a red carpet was rolled out for them to collect and lay flowers. It was then removed from the ceremonial crime scene, not without provoking angry reactions from netizens in Thailand.
Near the entrance, where white roses commemorate the tragedy, a grieving mother clutches the blanket of her missing child and holds her half-filled milk bottle. Some children were only two years old, like little Kamram, whose 19-year-old mother, Panita, is heartbroken. “It’s unbelievable,” she breathes, holding her 11-month-old daughter.
“I was very shocked and scared. I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t think it would be my two grandchildren,” said Buarai Tanontong, three years old, squeezing her daughter’s shoulder. “I still can’t accept what happened. The attacker, what is your heart made of?” wrote Seksan Srirach, the husband of a teacher who was pregnant with their child and killed in kindergarten, in a post on Facebook.
“He was a nice guy”
During the night, the small white and purple coffins were transported to a hospital morgue in Udon Thani, in the neighboring province. King Rama X, who is considered a deity in the country, is expected at the bedside of the wounded shortly after Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha in Nong Bua Lamphu hospital.
This ordered the opening of a preliminary investigation and asked the police chief to “accelerate the investigation”. The first elements provided paint a portrait of a 34-year-old attacker plagued by drug problems that caused him to lose his police job last June.
“He was expected to be tried on Friday for his drug problem,” national police chief Damrongsak Kittiprapat said on Thursday. “Everyone knew the shooter. He was a nice guy, but later we all knew he was doing meth,” said Kamjad Pra-intr, a resident who came to support the families.
Drugs, central problem of the kingdom
This is not the first time Thailand has been hit by a massacre of this magnitude. In February 2020, an exchange of fire by an army officer left 29 dead, mostly at a shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima (east). The shooter, a 31-year-old chief warrant officer, was shot dead by police after his nearly 17-hour rampage. He had played out after an argument with a supervisor.
The Na Klang drama is a reminder of the extent of the drug problems in the kingdom, where wholesale and retail prices have fallen to historic lows due to oversupply, according to data released in 2021 by the UN. The rural province of Nong Bua Lamphu lies near the “Golden Triangle” on the border between Burma and Laos, which has been a hotspot for drug production in the region for decades.