SAMUT PRAKAN - Police have arrested three students for involvement in a horrific attack on a 16-year-old student they mistook for a member of a rival gang.
Bank, a first year vocational student whose full name withheld, sustained multiple slash wounds to his body. The tendons in his left shoulder were cut, disabling his left arm, and six of his fingers were chopped off. Doctors were able to reattach only four of them.
Police said they apprehended Adisak, Attapon, and Seksan, all third year students at the Bangkok Institution of Technology (BIT) whose names were also withheld.
Police said they had also identified nine other students who took part in the vicious assault and were currently requesting their parents to turn them in.
The three attackers (seated).
Photo by Surapol Promsaka Na Sakolnakorn.
According to police, Bank said he was attacked on Jan 10, 2012 in Boonsiri road in Muang district of Samut Prakan. He was talking to friends who attended a different school when a group of around 20 students got off a bus and suddenly attacked them.
He said a gunshot was fired moments later, which made everyone flee, including him. He hid and waited for awhile before sneaking out to retrieve his motorbike.
The attackers then ambushed him with wooden batons and machetes, mistaking him for a student from his friends' school, Bank said.
Six of his fingers were cut off as he was trying to protect his head with his hands, he said.
The 16-year-old was rushed to a hospital by a passerby. Doctors inserted about 200 stitches in sewing up his wounds and were able to reattach four of his fingers, reports said.
Police said the teenagers who were arrested admitted that they attacked the wrong person and apologised to him. They added that they were angry because their rivals had earlier thrown explosive devices.
Bank's story went viral on the internet last Saturday after a Facebook user "Coke Ei d"' wrote about it and posted several graphic images on the Facebook page of popular TV news commentator Sorayuth Suthassanachinda, demanding that police take immediate action.
Pol Col Panlop Araemlha, superintendent of Samut Prakan police station, said it was difficult to identify and track down the perpetrators because there were no close circuit cameras at the crime site and no witnesses. They finally made three arrests on Monday.
The Ruamkatanyu Foundation has given the victim's family 20,000 baht to help with payments towards his recovery, seeing that they were struggling financially.