Grieving Thais say ‘nothing has changed’ as massacre reignites concerns over uniformed men

Name: ‘I folded my hands’: Thai childcare centre workers describe facing assailant before deadly attack
Uploaded: 2022-10-10T11:40:07.000Z
Duration: 2 min
Description: ‘I folded my hands’: Thai childcare centre workers describe facing assailant before deadly attack

Panya Kamrab, a police officer sacked for drug offences, killed 36 people last week, including children, while a soldier killed 29 in 2020

Experts say police often ‘buy their own pistols’ which can lead to corruption or worse, and many use drugs, which affects mental health

Reading Time:4 minutes

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Families in Thailand pray following a mass shooting last week which claimed 36 lives, including children. Photo: Reuters

SCMP Reporter

Published: 7:40pm, 10 Oct 2022Updated: 8:35pm, 10 Oct 2022

The massacre at a Thai nursery is reviving the dread and sorrow Chanathip has tried to bury for more than two years. The 36-year-old teacher survived Thailand’s last mass killing by barricading a washroom in a shopping centre to keep out a rampaging soldier and save his toddler – and a dozen others – from harm.

The February 2020 attack in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima was committed by Jakrapanth Thomma, a 32-year-old army sergeant-major who killed 29 and wounded scores more with automatic weapons after becoming provoked by an apparent business dispute with a senior officer.

Last week, Panya Kamrab, a 34-year-old former police sergeant fired earlier this year for drug offences, killed 36 people – among them 24 young children sleeping at a nursery school in the rural northeast village of Uthai Sawan – in a violent spree using a gun and a knife.

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‘I folded my hands’: Thai childcare centre workers describe facing assailant before deadly attack

Separated by two years, hundreds of kilometres and the specifics of their targets and motivations, the two mass killings are still linked by the profile of attackers with years in uniform, targeting the very civilians they were trained to protect.

“Nothing has changed,” said Chanathip, who spent several harrowing hours with his family hidden in the toilet of the Terminal 21 mall on February 9, 2020, as Jakrapanth stalked the concourses, killing indiscriminately as he went.

“When I learned it was an ex-policeman who carried out the nursery attack, I thought, ‘When will they ever have stricter gun laws for these men in uniform? When will these men ever get support for their mental health?’”.

In death, Jakrapanth, shot dead by security forces, and Panya, who took his own life after killing his wife and stepson, took with them any hope of justice or explanation of why they chose to slaughter innocents.

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