Bangkok police have launched a manhunt for three men, riding two motorcycles, who shot and killed a 16-year-old vocational student on Ranong 2 Road in the Dusit district of Bangkok on Monday morning.
The victim has been identified as a second-year student at Dusit Technical College. He was found dead on the pavement. A pen pistol with a .38 calibre bullet in the chamber was found near his body.
Police have questioned the victim’s friend, who reportedly said that he left the college on a motorcycle to pick the victim up, after he had disembarked from a bus on Rama V Road, opposite the entrance to Ranong 2 Road.
He said the victim told him he was being followed by three men riding two motorcycles, wearing black and full face crash helmets. He said they stopped in the middle of the road, then rushed toward him, one welding a knife. He then heard a gunshot and the victim collapsed. The three perpetrators escaped towards the Rama V Road.
A lecturer at the college told the police that the students there have not been engaged in violent incidents with other college students for about five years.
The victim’s father told the police that his son usually went to the college by bus from home in the Din Daeng area in casual clothes, changing into his uniform after entering the college.
He said that he had asked his son to quit the college out of fear for his safety, because of inter -school rivalry, but his son insisted on continuing his studies at the college, adding that he had only one son.
On November 11th, a female teacher at the Sacred Heart Convent School, was also killed by a stray bullet and a student of Rajamangala University of Technology Tawan-Ok Uthenthawai Campus was fatally wounded by rival students on Sunthorn Kosa Road in the Khlong Toei area. Police have still been unable to arrest the perpetrators, who are believed to be students from a rival college.
