The gunshots began to be heard around mid-morning at one of the most well-known high schools in Nonthaburi, a province adjacent to Bangkok. In one of the videos recorded from inside a classroom, dozens of students are seen crouching under the desks. Some cry. Others remain silent while, on the other side of the walls, the shots echo.
A student opened fire this Friday at Debsirin Nonthaburi high school, killing three teachers and three students. The attacker also died, raising the death toll to seven, according to the latest update from the Thai Police. Another 15 people were injured, some seriously.
The attack occurred during school hours at this center located next to a busy road in the Bang Kruai district, northwest of the capital. The school had around 3,100 students and 147 teachers. The images that began to circulate shortly after the shooting showed teenagers running towards the school gates, ambulances making their way through traffic, and teachers embracing each other in tears.
Emergency teams arrived while shots were still being heard. Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, one of the paramedics who entered the school, told Reuters that they treated students with wounds on their back, chest, and arms. On one of the upper floors, they found a teacher dead. In another room, there was a teacher with gunshot wounds to the chest and arm. Paramedics tried to resuscitate her for about half an hour before taking her to the hospital, but they could not save her.
An evacuated student walks past an armed officerWason WanichakornAp
During the first hours, there was confusion about the fate of the shooter. It has been reported that it was a teenage student from the school. Some reports initially stated that he had been shot, while others suggested that he had shot himself. The latest version provided by the National Police and reported by the agencies indicates that the student committed suicide and is among the seven deceased. Authorities are still investigating the motive. Police are also trying to reconstruct how he obtained the weapon.
In the home of the perpetrator of the massacre, the Police found two more bodies. According to the investigation, he ended the lives of his grandparents before heading to the school and starting to shoot. Once at the center, the attacker fired 26 shots. In his possession, 34 more rounds of ammunition were found.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul expressed his condolences to the families and ordered the mobilization of administrations to assist the injured and the families of the victims.
Easy access to firearms
The massacre once again highlights an old problem in Thailand: firearms. The country has one of the highest ownership rates in Southeast Asia. The latest estimates cited by local media calculated more than 10.3 million firearms in the hands of civilians, around 15 per 100 inhabitants. This is in addition to a significant market for illegal weapons.
This Friday's incident is not even the first time this year that gunshots have entered a Thai school. In February, a young man armed entered Phatong Prathan Khiriwat school in Hat Yai, in the southern province of Songkhla. The attacker had taken a 9-millimeter pistol from a police officer before entering the school, where he opened fire and temporarily took teachers and students as hostages. The principal, Sasiphat Sinsamosorn, 54, later died from her injuries, and several students were injured. The suspect was arrested after more than an hour of tension.
There is another date that remains etched in the country's collective memory: October 6, 2022. On that day, former police officer Panya Kamrab entered a nursery in Uthai Sawan, in the northeastern province of Nong Bua Lamphu. Armed with a pistol and a knife, he killed 36 people. Among them were 22 children, many stabbed while napping. He then killed his wife and son before committing suicide. It was the worst massacre committed by a single attacker in recent Thai history.
In October 2023, the scene of the massacre was a shopping mall, this time in the heart of Bangkok. A 14-year-old teenager entered armed into the luxurious Siam Paragon, one of the capital's consumption temples, and began shooting. Two people died, and five others were injured. The weapon used was a modified pistol.
Three years earlier, in February 2020, a soldier turned the city of Nakhon Ratchasima into another slaughter scene. After killing his commander and stealing weapons from a military base, Jakrapanth Thomma roamed the city shooting civilians and eventually barricaded himself in the Terminal 21 shopping mall. 29 people died before the special forces shot him down.
Each of these massacres has practically reopened the same debate: how a country that maintains relatively strict controls on the legal purchase of firearms still has so many pistols and rifles circulating among the population.