Gunmen still elusive, as 12 arrests in Bangkok teacher killing
Police Monday searched 14 locations around Bangkok but failed to locate two gunmen believed to have killed a primary school teacher and fatally injuring a student of a rival technical college.
In the lastest development, police nabbed 11 men and a woman for allegedly supporting the fatal shootings as members of an alleged crime syndicate targetting the rival students.
Armed with search warrants and arrest warrants, Metropolitan Police Bureau officers were dispatched Monday morning to check 14 locations for a pillion rider gunman and a motorcyclist but they came up empty-handed.
Police are seeking two students of Pathumwan Institute of Technology (PIT) after Sirada “Khru Jiab” Sinprasert, a teacher at Sacred Heart Convent School, was shot dead along with Thanasorn, 19, a student of Rajamangala University of Technology Tawan-ok, Uthenthawai Campus on November 11. Thanasorn later died in hospital.
Police believe that the two alleged gunmen were supported by a group of PIT alumni to indiscriminately hunt Uthenthawai students. The hunt was to take revenge for PIT students alleged to have been killed by Uthenthawai students in a decades-long history of street fights between the two technical institutions.
On November 22, police arrested nine suspects suspected of supporting the two gunmen’s attack by communicating via a Line group.
The Metropolitan Police Bureau identified the suspects as:
- Chananchit Saenchan, 21, who visited the first group of nine suspects and cried foul that police had arrested “scapegoats”
- Jiramet Namnarong, 20
- Kantapong Prompithak, 28
- Korakot Tue-ae, 20
- Suksan Kongkaew, 22
- Chumnoomchok Iampan, 21
- Nakarin Nakhin, 29
- Thanachote Boonsongkroh, 22
- Noppawut Ruangsri, 25
- Nattakit Khamkao, 33
- Anyarat Thongsuk, 24.
Anyarat was the only female suspect.
Noppawut was arrested under an arrest warrant dated November 22 on the charge of illegal assembly with more than five with a plan to commit crimes.
Police also seized one automatic pistol, two knives and one box of .45mm ammunition, as well as 11 PIT uniform shirts.
All 12 suspects have denied the charges.
