UDON THANI, THAILAND (AFP) – A former police officer shot dead at least 37 people, most of them children, when he stormed a nursery in Thailand yesterday in one of the kingdom’s deadliest mass killings.
Following the attack, gunman Panya Khamrab went home and killed his wife and child before taking his own life, police said.
Armed with a shotgun, pistol and knife, Panya opened fire on the childcare centre in northeastern Nong Bua Lam Phu province at about 12.30pm.
National Police Chief Damrongsak Kittiprapat told a news conference the gunman killed 37 people, including 23 children and his own family, and wounded 12 others.
Nanthicha Punchum, acting chief of the nursery, described harrowing scenes as the attacker barged into the building.
“There were some staff eating lunch outside the nursery and the attacker parked his car and shot four of them dead,” she told AFP.
“The shooter smashed down the door with his leg and then came inside and started slashing the children’s heads with a knife.”
Footage after the incident showed distraught parents weeping in a shelter outside the nursery, a yellow single-storey building set in a garden.
The 34-year-old gunman was a former police sergeant suspended in January and sacked in June for drug use, Damrongsak told reporters.
“As far as I know, he was due in court tomorrow for a drug-related trial,” he said.
He said the attacker was in a manic state but it was unknown whether it was drug-related.
“We have to test his blood for drugs,” he said.
“What happened today will be a lesson to prevent this happening again in the future.”
Damrongsak said the pistol used had been purchased legally and was a privately owned weapon, not police property.
Witness Paweena Purichan, 31, said the attacker was well known in the area as a drug addict.
She told AFP she encountered Panya driving erratically as he fled the scene.
“The attacker rammed a motorbike into two people who were injured. I sped off to get away from him,” she said.
“There was blood everywhere.”
Video Paweena posted online showed a woman lying injured in a roadside bush after apparently being knocked off her motorbike by Panya.
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha ordered the national police chief to “fast-track an investigation” and said he would travel to the scene of the attack today.
“This should not happen. This absolutely should not happen,” Prayut told reporters.
“I am extremely sorry for those who were injured and lost their loved ones.”
Thailand forms part of Southeast Asia’s so-called Golden Triangle which has long been an infamous hotspot for the trafficking and abuse of drugs.
Surging supplies of methamphetamine have sent street prices crashing in Thailand to all-time lows, according to the United Nations (UN) Office on Drugs and Crime.
The mass killing comes less than a month after an army officer shot dead two colleagues at a military training base in the capital Bangkok.
