By Panu Wongcha-um and Panarat Thepgumpanat
BANG BUA THONG, Thailand, Aug 7 (Reuters) – The boy shot his grandparents dead at dawn on Friday in their two-storey house bordering rice fields on the outskirts of Bangkok. Each was killed by a single gunshot to the head, a Thai police official said.
By noon, bodies lay strewn at the 14-year-old’s school — five more dead and 23 wounded — before he turned the gun on himself, ending Thailand’s worst mass shooting since 2022.
Police Colonel Thadsakorn Konthong, superintendent of Bang Bua Thong Police Station, said the boy killed his elderly relatives at around 5 a.m. local time (2200 GMT Thursday).
“The firearm and the bullets belonged to the grandfather,” Thadsakorn told Reuters. “An initial inspection found signs that the firearm had been searched for inside the grandfather’s bedroom.”
The three of them lived together in the house in Bang Bua Thong, surrounded by trees and ringed by a concrete fence in a quiet neighbourhood, a 90-minute drive from central Bangkok.
A canal runs by at the front and an empty plot of land lies behind. In the yard hangs a red and white Nazi flag that police said belonged to the teenager’s uncle.
The whereabouts of the boy’s parents remain unclear.
After shooting his grandparents, the teenager boarded the school van that came to fetch him at home, said Thadsakorn. He carried the gun and dozens of bullets with him.
The Debsirin Nonthaburi School, where the boy studied, lies around 18 km (11 miles) from the house, or a 45-minute drive. Last year, the school had an enrolment of around 3,100 students, taught by 147 teachers, according to district authorities.
His first class began at 8:30 a.m., followed by another at 9:20 a.m.
About half an hour into the boy’s second class of the day he drew out the gun and began shooting again, police estimate.
At 9:57 a.m., the Plai Bang Police Station overseeing the area where the school is located received a phone call about a shooting, an official said.
As the shots rang out, one 18-year-old student initially thought he was hearing fireworks going off, before a teacher told him to evacuate. Some ran out in their socks or bare feet, clutching sheets of paper and mobile phones.
Others took cover under their desks, weeping as they lay on the floor listening to the sound of the firing, according to a video posted on social media and verified by Reuters.
TEACHERS TARGETED
The teenager is believed to have first shot teachers on the sixth floor of the building where he studied, killing three of them, said Police Major General Dejrapee Kongdee, commander of the Nonthaburi Provincial Police.
One was a female Thai language teacher who he shot in the eye, according to a timeline of the incident shared by Thai police. The gunman then appears to have continued down a corridor, shooting at students.
“He then walked down the stairs and encountered the school’s deputy director and the director’s secretary, who were going up the stairs to check on the situation,” Dejrapee told Reuters.
“The attacker shot and killed both of them on the staircase.”
The boy began walking towards another building but appeared to change his route after seeing police arrive, and he fled into a four-storey structure, Dejrapee said.
When he arrived at the school, emergency worker Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, 47, said the scene was chaotic as his team began treating students with wounds to the back, chest and arms.
“We were evaluating the sort of weapons he had,” he said, referring to the gunman. “Therefore, we could not rush inside. The police then took a team with shields up there.”
After evacuating students and teachers from the school, police began clearing the building floor-by-floor, until they found the teenager on the fourth floor, where he had already shot himself, said Dejrapee. The time was around 10:40 a.m.
“He was still alive, so they performed CPR and rushed him to the hospital,” he said.
The 14-year-old died soon after.
In all, he had used at least 26 bullets. Another 34 rounds were found in his possession.
‘STRESSED FROM HIS STUDIES’.
The boy’s motives remain unclear.
“He was stressed from his studies,” Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters after he visited the school, echoing what one police official told Reuters. “His actions were deliberate. From what we saw he had a plan.”
After the Songkran festival in April marking the start of Thailand’s traditional New Year, the teenager had posted a picture of his grandfather’s gun and that the weapon had a permit, Anutin said.
In addition to studying at school in the week, the 14-year-old attended tutoring classes over the weekends and enjoyed playing shooting games at the end of the day until midnight, Dejrapee said.
“The student was described as quiet, not very sociable, and fairly good academically,” he said.
Friday’s rampage has renewed scrutiny of gun regulations in Thailand, Southeast Asia’s largest gun-owning nation with roughly 15 firearms per 100 residents.
Anutin, who tightened gun laws when he was interior minister following a previous mass shooting, said he will propose a new law to restrict the carrying of firearms by the public.
“As much as possible, we have to create an atmosphere of safety,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Napat Wesshasartar and Chayut Setboonsarng; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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