At least 34 people, including 22 children, were killed this Thursday in an attack on a kindergarten in the Thai village of Uthai Sawan in Nongbua Lamphu province in the northeast of the country, which also injured more than a dozen people. Among the dead were two-year-old children and a teacher eight months pregnant.
The suspect in the attack is a former police officer named Panya Kamrab, who was fired last year due to drug problems and whose son attended said daycare.
The attack took place in the afternoon (Thursday morning in mainland Portugal), while the children were sleeping, and hours after the suspect had been heard in court in a drug-related case.
According to local authorities quoted by Reuters, the attacker entered the kindergarten in search of his son and was already clearly upset.
As soon as he realized that his son was not in the kindergarten, he attacked and killed the teachers, teachers and children, using a knife and at least one firearm – according to unconfirmed reports, in addition to melee weapons, he was armed with a knife, a shotgun and a pistol.
From there, he escaped in his own car and went to his house, where he killed his wife and child. He then committed suicide.
“The shooter showed up around lunchtime and started shooting at four or five caregivers,” Jidaka Bunsom, a civil servant who was in an office near the school, told Reuters about the children’s noise.
“It was really shocking. We were very scared and ran to hide as soon as we realized that this was a shootout. So many children were killed. I have never seen anything like it,” he complained.
“[O suspeito] he was already very upset and even more upset when he couldn’t find his son. And the shooting started,” police spokesman Paisan Lusomboon confirmed in a statement to ThaiPBS.
An eyewitness also told AFP that on the way home, the attacker “tried to crash into others.” [carros] that street.”
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha also used the term “shocking” to describe the horrific crime committed on Thursday in Uthai Sawan.
The head of government sent condolences to the families of the victims and mobilized all the necessary public services to provide assistance to the wounded and survivors.
Shooting of this nature is not very common in Thailand, despite the fact that the country has a higher percentage of firearms owners compared to neighboring states, writes Reuters.
The porous borders, the news agency adds, allow many illegal weapons to enter the territory.
Still, there was such a crime in 2020 when a Thai soldier us 29 people and more than 50 were injured at four different points in Nakhon Ratchasima, a city northeast of the capital Bangkok.
