An ex-policeman in northeast Thailand charged with dealing drugs rampaged through his child’s daycare center with a gun and a knife, killing 38 people, including 24 children.
After his killing spree at the daycare center, he made his way home, shooting and stabbing those he met along the way. After he got home, he killed his wife and child before turning the gun on himself.
Most of the children were between the ages of two and five, according to a Reuters report. Almost all were knifed to death. The horror took place in Uthai Sawan, a town 310 miles northeast of Bangkok.
The man had been in court earlier in the day and had then gone to the daycare centre to collect his child, police spokesperson Paisal Luesomboon told broadcaster ThaiPBS.
When he did not find his child there, he began the killing spree, Paisal said. “He started shooting, slashing, killing children at the Uthai Sawan daycare centre,” Paisal said.
“It’s a scene that nobody wants to see. From the first step when I went in, it felt harrowing,” Piyalak Kingkaew, an experienced emergency worker heading the first responder team, told Reuters.
Ordinarily, we would refrain from making a political statement about the deaths of children at a daycare center in a nation that has stricter gun laws than even the most ardent American gun grabber could dream of enacting here.
But that’s the sort of thing left-wing ghouls do when a mass shooting happens in America. Decency, propriety, compassion, and empathy are out the window when there are political points against guns to make.
Sickening.
About 30 children were at the facility – a pink, one-storey building surrounded by a lawn and small palm trees – when the attacker arrived, fewer than usual, as heavy rain had kept many people away, said district official Jidapa Boonsom, who was working in a nearby office at the time.
“The shooter came in around lunch time and shot four or five officials at the childcare centre first,” Jidapa told Reuters.
The attacker forced his way into a locked room where the children were sleeping, Jidapa said. A teacher who was eight months pregnant was also among those stabbed to death, she said.
The estimated total number of guns held, legally and illegally, by civilians in Thailand was 10.3 million in 2017, or one for about every seven citizens. Of those, about 4 million were illegal. Penalties for possessing an illegal firearm are strict — ten years in many cases.
Thailand is getting more dangerous, and many citizens want gun laws relaxed so they can legally purchase a firearm. As illegal guns become easier to get — and they are more and more available as a result of conflicts and wars in neighboring countries — it won’t matter as much to those seeking protection.
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