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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Thais mourn dozens, mainly kids, killed in day care attack

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1007 days ago
20221007
Relatives pray during a ceremony for those killed in the attack on the Young Children's Development Center in the rural town of Uthai Sawan, north eastern Thailand, Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. A former policeman facing a drug charge burst into a day care center in northeastern Thailand on Thursday, killing dozens of preschoolers and teachers before shooting more people as he fled in the deadliest rampage in the nation's history. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

Relatives pray during a ceremony for those killed in the attack on the Young Children's Development Center in the rural town of Uthai Sawan, north eastern Thailand, Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. A former policeman facing a drug charge burst into a day care center in northeastern Thailand on Thursday, killing dozens of preschoolers and teachers before shooting more people as he fled in the deadliest rampage in the nation's history. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

Rel­a­tives wailed and some col­lapsed as they griev­ed Fri­day over the small coffins car­ry­ing chil­dren slain by a fired po­lice of­fer who stormed a day care cen­ter in rur­al Thai­land dur­ing nap­time.

Thai­land’s dead­liest mass killing left vir­tu­al­ly no one un­touched in the small com­mu­ni­ty nes­tled among rice pad­dies in one of the na­tion’s poor­est re­gions. Grief al­so gripped the rest of the coun­try, where flags were low­ered to half-staff and school­child­ren said prayers to hon­or the dead.

At least 24 of the 36 peo­ple killed in Thurs­day’s gris­ly gun and knife at­tack were chil­dren, most­ly preschool­ers.

“I cried un­til I had no more tears com­ing out of my eyes. They are run­ning through my heart,” said Sek­san Sri­raj, 28, whose preg­nant wife was due to give birth this month and who worked at the Young Chil­dren’s De­vel­op­ment Cen­ter in Uthai Sawan.

“My wife and my child have gone to a peace­ful place. I am alive and will have to live. If I can’t go on, my wife and my child will be wor­ried about me, and they won’t be re­born in the next life,” he said.

A stream of peo­ple, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Prayuth Chan-ocha, oth­er gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives and rel­a­tives them­selves, have left flow­ers at the day care cen­ter. By af­ter­noon, bou­quets of white ros­es and car­na­tions lined the wall out­side, along with five tiny juice box­es, bags of corn chips and a stuffed an­i­mal.

Lat­er, rel­a­tives re­ceived the bod­ies at the lo­cal Bud­dhist tem­ple. As the small, white coffins were opened, some screamed, while oth­ers faint­ed. Para­medics re­vived them with smelling salts. For a time, the grounds out­side the tem­ple were crowd­ed with peo­ple over­come by grief.

“It was just too much. I can’t ac­cept this,” said Oy Yo­d­khao, 51, sit­ting on a bam­boo mat in the op­pres­sive heat as rel­a­tives gave her wa­ter and gen­tly mopped her brow.

Her 4-year-old grand­son Tawatchai Sri­phu was killed, and she said she wor­ried for the child’s sib­lings. The fam­i­ly of rice farm­ers is close, with three gen­er­a­tions liv­ing un­der one roof.

Som-Mai Pit­fai col­lapsed when she saw the body of her 3-year-old niece.

“When I looked, I saw she had been slashed in the face with a knife,” the 58-year-old said, hold­ing back tears.

King Ma­ha Va­ji­ra­longko­rn and Queen Suthi­da were ex­pect­ed lat­er in the day to go to hos­pi­tals, where sev­en of the 10 peo­ple wound­ed re­main. A vig­il was planned in a cen­tral park in Bangkok, the na­tion’s cap­i­tal.

Po­lice iden­ti­fied the at­tack­er as Pa­nya Kam­rap, 34, a for­mer po­lice sergeant fired ear­li­er this year be­cause of a drug charge in­volv­ing metham­phet­a­mine. He had been due to ap­pear in court Fri­day. An em­ploy­ee told a Thai TV sta­tion that Pa­nya’s son had at­tend­ed the day care but hadn’t been there for about a month.

Wit­ness­es said the at­tack­er shot a man and child in front of the cen­ter be­fore walk­ing to­ward it. Teach­ers locked the glass front door, but the gun­man shot and kicked his way through it. The chil­dren, main­ly preschool­ers, had been tak­ing an af­ter­noon nap, and pho­tos tak­en by first re­spon­ders showed their tiny bod­ies still ly­ing on blan­kets. In some im­ages, slash­es to the vic­tims’ faces and gun­shots to their heads could be seen.

Pa­nya took his own life af­ter killing his wife and child at home.

In an in­ter­view with Amarin TV, Sati­ta Boon­som, who worked at the day care cen­ter, said staff locked the door to the build­ing af­ter see­ing the as­sailant shoot a child and his fa­ther out front. But the at­tack­er broke the glass and went on to at­tack the chil­dren and work­ers with his knife and firearm.

Sati­ta said she and three oth­er teach­ers climbed the cen­ter’s fence to es­cape and call po­lice and seek help. By the time she re­turned, the chil­dren were dead. She said one child who was cov­ered by a blan­ket sur­vived the at­tack, ap­par­ent­ly be­cause the as­sailant as­sumed he was dead.

She said the cen­ter usu­al­ly has around 70 to 80 chil­dren, but there were few­er at the time of the at­tack be­cause the se­mes­ter had end­ed for old­er chil­dren and rain pre­vent­ed a school bus from op­er­at­ing.

“They wouldn’t have sur­vived,” she said.

Sati­ta added that the at­tack­er’s son hadn’t been to the day care cen­ter re­cent­ly be­cause he was sick.

One of the youngest sur­vivors is a 3-year-old boy who was rid­ing a tri­cy­cle close to his moth­er and grand­moth­er when the as­sailant be­gan slash­ing them with the knife. The moth­er died from her wounds, and the boy and grand­moth­er were be­ing treat­ed at hos­pi­tals, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal me­dia.

Mass shoot­ings are rare but not un­heard of in Thai­land, which has one of the high­est civil­ian gun own­er­ship rates in Asia, with 15.1 weapons per 100 peo­ple com­pared to on­ly 0.3 in Sin­ga­pore and 0.25 in Japan. That’s still far low­er than the U.S. rate of 120.5 per 100 peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to a 2017 sur­vey by Aus­tralia’s Gun­Pol­i­cy.org non­prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Sup­port and con­do­lences poured in from around the world. “All Aus­tralians send their love and con­do­lences,” Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Al­banese tweet­ed. U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken called the vi­o­lence “sense­less and heart­break­ing.”

Pope Fran­cis of­fered prayers for all those af­fect­ed by such “un­speak­able vi­o­lence.”

“I’m pro­found­ly sad­dened by the heinous shoot­ing at a child­care cen­tre in Thai­land,” U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res tweet­ed.

Thai­land’s pre­vi­ous worst mass killing in­volved a dis­grun­tled sol­dier who opened fire in and around a mall in the north­east­ern city of Nakhon Ratchasi­ma in 2020, killing 29 peo­ple and hold­ing off se­cu­ri­ty forces for some 16 hours be­fore even­tu­al­ly be­ing killed by them.

Near­ly 60 oth­ers were wound­ed in that at­tack. Its death toll sur­passed that of the pre­vi­ous­ly worst at­tack on civil­ians, a 2015 bomb­ing at a shrine in Bangkok that killed 20 peo­ple. It was al­leged­ly car­ried out by hu­man traf­fick­ers in re­tal­i­a­tion for a crack­down on their net­work.

Last month, a clerk shot co-work­ers at Thai­land’s Army War Col­lege in Bangkok, killing two and wound­ing an­oth­er be­fore he was ar­rest­ed.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Chal­i­da Ekvit­thayavech­nukul, Elaine Kurten­bach and Grant Peck in Bangkok and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Ko­rea, con­tributed to this re­port.

See more AP Asia-Pa­cif­ic cov­er­age at https://ap­news.com/hub/asia-pa­cif­ic

By TAS­SA­NEE VE­JPONGSA and DAVID RIS­ING-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

ThaiDay care killing


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