CHON BURI - A 14-year-old Thai-Australian schoolboy was stabbed to death by his friend at the entrance of a housing estate in Sattahip district on Tuesday night. The teen attacker was subsequently arrested.
The fatal knife attack occurred in front of a grocery store at the Montra Garden Home housing estate in tambon Bang Sareh, said police, who were alerted at about 8.30pm.
On arriving at the scene, officers found the 14-year-old boy lying dead in front of the store with a stab wound to his back.
The victim, whose name was withheld, was a Mathayom Suksa 1 (Grade 7) student of a private school in the district. A fruit knife was found on the pavement. The attacker had fled.
The mother of the victim, identified as Darunee, said she was inside the house at the time. She was not aware her son was at the grocery store until a security guard at the housing estate told her that he had been stabbed to death.
Ms Darunee, 50, said she was shocked and saddened, and never thought her son would have his life ended at such a young age. She wanted to know why the attacker had cruelly killed her son.
Investigators learned that the suspect was a Mathayom Suksa 2 (Grade 8) student, according to Pol Col Thanaphol Klinkesorn, chief of the Sattahip police station. After the attack, he had fled to his house at another housing estate about 400 metres away. The boy and his parents were taken for questioning at the Sattahip station.
During questioning, the suspect told police that he and the victim had not been on good terms lately. The teen had a look on his face that indicated he wanted to stir up trouble, police quoted the assailant as saying.
The suspect said he sent a chat message to the victim to clear up their problem but when they met, a quarrel turned into a brawl and the two separated.
The victim went to the grocery store, said the attacker, adding the he ran after him before using a knife to stab him in the back. The victim fell down.
The suspect said he rode his motorcycle to his house, apparently not realising that the single stab wound would take his friend’s life.
Police examined closed-circuit camera footage, showing the attacker arriving on a motorcycle to see the victim in front of the latter’s housing estate at 8.18pm on Tuesday. They got involved in a physical fight before the suspect stabbed the victim in the back.
On Wednesday, police took the suspect to the Chon Buri family and juvenile court to meet psychiatrists who questioned him. The officers are preparing to press charges against him.
The body of the victim was sent to Police General Hospital in Bangkok for an autopsy.