8 dead, including 10 suspect’s grandparents, in Thailand shooting

A teenager described as “troubled” by a classmate killed his grandparents before gunning down at least six more people at a school in Thailand on Friday, police said.

First he shot dead his grandparents, using his grandfather’s handgun, then went to a secondary school in Nonthaburi province, bordering Bangkok, and killed three teachers and three students, national police said in a statement.

Dozens of police and emergency responders gathered outside the cordoned-off Debsirin Nonthaburi School on Friday, AFP journalists saw, while parents waited to pick up their children and tearful students and staff comforted each other outside.

“I was afraid that I would die, and I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to pursue my dreams,” Pawarisa Maylissa, a grade 12 student who hopes to attend medical school, told AFP.

“I heard many gunshots very loudly because it seemed the suspect was on the floor directly above us. I could even hear bullets hitting the floor.”

Fifteen injured students were not struck by gunfire but hurt as they were trying to flee, deputy interior minister Polapee Suwunchwee told local broadcaster Thai PBS.

Police later said 23 people were injured.

The shooter was identified by local media as a teenage student of the school, and police said he died during the incident.

Some media reports said police officers had shot and killed him, while others said he had died by suicide.

Purin Khumchoo, 17, said he was among the students who had nearly been shot.

“He was my junior, but I had a feeling that he was a troubled kid. My group of friends who knew him said he was interested in the FBI and guns, and that he was bullied by many other students,” Purin told AFP outside his school.

“When I saw him aiming the gun at me, I thought he looked very professional, as if he had been trained for a long time.”

Photos published by local media show the suspect wearing a purple school uniform and carrying a black cross-body bag, with several bullet casings visible on the ground.

An AFP journalist saw a dozen mental health workers arrive at the school, where traffic was nearly at a standstill.

Education Minister Prasert Jantararuangtong pledged to provide mental health assistance to students and ramp up security measures at educational institutions.

“We haven’t checked whether students have brought weapons to school. Our level of security is not that tight,” he told reporters at the school.

Thongchai Thanakat, a motorcycle-taxi driver who has worked in the area for 20 years, said he was waiting to pick up passengers outside the school when he heard more than 10 gunshots and saw a stream of students rushing out.

“Some of them weren’t even wearing shoes,” he told AFP.

“I feel very bad for one student whose body I saw after he was shot right through his head. It was very emotional for me.”

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said the shooting “should never have happened”.

“It’s such a terrible incident,” he told reporters at Bangkok’s Government House. “How could this happen in our country?”

Thailand has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the region, with around 10 million firearms estimated to be in circulation -- one for every seven inhabitants.

Past promises of tightening gun laws have not prevented repeated shootings.

Thai police shot and arrested a teenager who opened fire at a school in the south of the country in February, killing the principal and wounding two students.

The teen had used a police officer’s weapon in the shooting.

A local police chief said at the time that the suspect was hospitalised for psychiatric treatment in December and had been discharged.

The teen stabbed a police officer with a knife and stole his weapon -- a 9mm pistol -- just before the incident, and then used it to carry out the attack.

In 2022, an ex-policeman armed with a gun and a knife stormed into a nursery in the country’s north and murdered 24 children and 12 adults, one of Thailand’s deadliest massacres.