SATUN - A 15-year-old boy believed to be the decoy who lured two police officers to their death in an ambush in Satun province last week surrendered to police on Tuesday, police said.
The boy, name withheld, was wanted under an arrest warrant obtained by Manang district police.
His parents took him to surrender to Pol Lt Gen Suchart Theerasawat, a police inspector-general acting as deputy commander of the forward headquarters of the Royal Thai Police Office operations centre in the South, and Pol Col Jirawat Payungtham, deputy provincial police chief.
The arrest warrant was issued after police investigators reported that the boy was believed to have acted as a decoy in the ambush and murder of Pol Lt Col Jirapas Sengseng, deputy investigation chief of Manang police station, and Pol Sgt Maj Thanasak Torapit.
He is believed to have lured them to a rubber plantation in Satun's Khuan Khanun district where they were shot dead. The double murder is believed to be the work of drug trafficking gang.
Pol Lt Gen Suchart believed information obtained from the teenager would lead to the arrest of the killers.
Pol Com Prasit Damkrabi, chief of Manang district police, said three men were believed involved in the fatal bushwacking. Police were preparing a case to support an application for warrants for their arrest.
During the investigation into the murders, police recently searched three houses in tambon Palm Pattana of Manang district which belong to the father and an elder brother of a local politician.
In the search, the police seized one M16 rifle, one .22 rifle and many other articles. The seized items were sent to the police forensic science office in Songkhla province for examination to find out whether they had been used in the shooting of the two police officers.