Ex-policeman slaughters 22 children in a nursery in Thailand


BANGKOK (Reuters) – A former police officer massacred 38 people, including 22 children, at a daycare center in a central Thai town on Thursday, before heading to his home to kill his wife and child and then kill himself. dead, police said.

Most of the children murdered in the nursery in Uthai Sawan, about 500 km northeast of Bangkok, were stabbed to death, she said.

A police spokesman told ThaiPBS that the perpetrator of the massacre was a former policeman who had been fired last year for a drug offense and who had just appeared in court for these facts.

The killer went directly from the court to the nursery to look for his child there and, not finding him there, began to kill the employees and the other children with a gun and a knife, the porter said. speech, Paisal Luesomboon.

“He was extremely stressed and when he couldn’t find his child he freaked out,” he said.

About 30 children were in the crèche at the time of the killings, far fewer than usual due to heavy monsoon rains which prevented many residents from traveling around Uthai Sawan, located in the province of Nong Bua Lamphu, not far from the border with Laos.

“The shooter arrived at lunchtime and he shot four or five employees first,” Jidapa Boonsoon, a city official whose office is located next to the nursery, told Reuters.

The former police officer then went to a room where the children were having a nap. He stabbed most of them to death, as well as an eight-month-pregnant employee. “It’s really excruciating. I’ve never seen such a thing,” she testified.

The police spokesman said the suspect then drove home, where he killed his wife and child before committing suicide.

According to the police, he legally owned the firearm he used.

This mass shooting recalls the massacre in 2020 in which a soldier enraged by the failure of the sale of a house, which killed 29 people and injured 57 others in a town in the northeast of the capital Bangkok.

(Report by Orathai Sriring, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Chayut Setboonsarng, written by Martin Petty; French version Myriam Rivet and Tangi Salaün, edited by Sophie Louet and Kate Entringer)



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