A 14-year-old boy was arrested Tuesday after a deadly shooting at a busy Bangkok shopping mall, a year after the largest mass killing in Thailand’s modern history.
Two people, one Chinese and the other Burmese, were killed and five others injured in this shooting, according to a new report released by police chief Torsak Sukwimol.
The suspect is a fourteen-year-old young man who suffers from mental disorders and had not taken his medication, said this official. “He said it was like there was another ‘him’ inside telling him who to shoot,” Mr Sukwimol said.
The teenager, a student at an upscale private school near the mall, was wearing a cap with an American flag at the time of his arrest at a furniture store, according to surveillance footage relayed by the Thai press.
Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, who visited the scene in the evening, sent her condolences to the families affected by this tragedy.
“Chaotic”
The shooting caused scenes of panic in the shopping center, with witnesses telling AFP of the hasty evacuation of hundreds of people. Located in the heart of Bangkok, Siam Paragon is a tourist and commercial hotspot which attracts many visitors, particularly Chinese in a context of rebound in tourism in Thailand after the pandemic.
“I heard several gunshots, at least three, and saw people running towards the exits. It was chaotic,” Nattanon Dungsunenarn, a journalist who was in a store on the ground floor, told AFP.
“Everyone was looking for a place to hide. So many people were scared, a bit like a zombie movie,” said Xiong Ying, a 41-year-old Chinese tourist who was in a nearby shopping center at the time of the shooting. “Now I’m scared. It was so unexpected,” he admitted.
“Everyone was shocked and trying to contact their family,” said Thanpawasit Singthongkham, an employee at a Japanese restaurant in the mall.
This shooting took place almost a year to the day after the largest mass killing in modern Thai history, in the province of Nong Bua Lam Phu (north-east).
A former police officer then killed 36 people, the majority of whom were children under the age of five in a nursery, during a murderous journey with guns and knives which lasted more than three hours.
Armed attacks continue to claim victims almost every week in the kingdom, without the situation changing much on a legal level.
Thailand (70 million inhabitants) had around ten million firearms in 2017, almost half of which (4 million) were not registered with the authorities, according to the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss research program.
In 2020, a killing in a shopping center in Nakhon Ratchasima left 29 dead.