thailand soldier shooting
Courtesy CBC and Twitter
thailand soldier shooting
Courtesy CBC and Twitter

A Thai soldier reportedly killed his commanding officer, then stole an army vehicle and posted live video on Facebook as he went on a shooting spree toward a mall in the northern Thailand city of Nakhon Ratchasima (also known as Korat).

As the Daily Mail reports,

As he drove towards the Terminal 21 shopping mall in Korat, a city 155 miles northeast of Bangkok, Thomma opened fire, spraying bullets at civilians along the road.

Reports say the sergeant major also fired on a Buddhist temple en route.

According to the Associated Press . . .

Video taken outside the mall and shared on social media showed people taking cover in a parking lot as gunshots were fired.

The mall was shut down and the street outside was closed while the authorities tried to arrest the gunman and rescue shoppers inside.

Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Kongcheep Tantrawanich identified the suspect as Jakrapanth Thomma. He said police and military units had locked down the mall and the surrounding area.

The shooter had initially gone to a house in the city and shot two people dead, before going to the weapons store on an army base and taking a new gun, local police said.

He also shot at people on the army base, they added.

Police advised citizens to stay indoors.

The man who was identified by police as the suspect had posted on his Facebook page earlier in the day that “Death is inevitable for everyone.”

The soldier is reportedly hiding in the shopping mall.

Again from the AP:

Gun violence is not unheard of in Thailand. Firearms can be obtained legally, and many Thais own guns. Mass shootings are rare, though there are occasional gun battles in the far south of the country, where authorities have for years battled a long-running separatist insurgency.

The incident came just a month after another high-profile mall shooting, in the central Thai city of Lopburi. In that case, a masked gunman carrying a handgun with a silencer killed three people, including a 2-year-old boy, and wounded four others as he robbed a jewelry store. A suspect, a school director, was arrested less than two weeks later and reportedly confessed, saying he did not mean to shoot anyone.

As always, reported details in these situations aren’t always reliable and change over time.

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56 COMMENTS

  1. No. Gotta be Fake News.

    This kind of thing only happens in the United States.

    ‘Mike’ Bloomberg told me so.

    • Whenever you bring up counter-examples (Mexico is the easy one) they’ll move the goalposts. It becomes “this only happens in America among (X) countries.” Industrialized? What they really mean is “civilized” but they don’t want to say it because it sounds exactly as racist as it is.

    • I heard (from a reliable “annonymous” source that Trump was trying to start a race war in Thailand then he would blame it on Biden so he could get reelected.. or was Bernie, no wait it might have been Pelosi… Ahhh hell you can’t rely on those annonymous shits, they never get it right anyway….

  4. Wonder if he waited to get his license for the guns he stole?
    From a Thai law forum: “Thai law requires that you must be at least 20 years of age in order to apply for a license. Licenses for gun possession will not be granted to individuals who are disabled or handicapped and incapable of using a gun, unless possession is only for keepsake purposes. Persons who are incompetent, quasi-incompetent, mentally insane or deranged will not be permitted a license. Those who behave in a way that disrupts social peace and order are not eligible to obtain a license for gun possession. You must be employed and receive income. You must have a permanent address in Thailand and have your name listed in the house registration specifically in the area where you are applying for a license, for at least six months.”

  5. Another example of Evil taking control. Thailand is for the most part a Third world Banana Republic. While considered by many to be a vacation paradise. It is ruled by a king but the real power comes from those within the government willing to take bribes. Corruption is rampant. In all facets of Thai life. About 1 in 10 people legally own a firearm. With roughly the same ownership regulations as the U.S. The black market for firearms on the other hand is among the worst in the world. If you have the money. Anything can be had. Thailand’s murder rate is among the worst in Asia. Along with the drug trade. Which fuels much of the corruption in the country and government. Having worked with a number of people from Thailand. I can tell you with certainty. To a person not one of them will ever return to the Hell Hole they called the country of their birth. Even to visit family. They work hard every day. Attempting to get what family they have left in Thailand. The HELL OUT.

    • Well yeah , it’s worked for three hundred years, why change. Don’t spill the Masters tea.

    • Back in the early 70s the Thai military changed the .gov at their whim. We saw tanks and Armor on the streets so often that we started calling them voting machines.

      One of the reasons I’m leery of all the folks here that claim soldiers should follow their oath and replace a non popular .gov. Do we really want snuffy smith deciding who should govern? Or a cabal of majors?

    • Hmm, crooked politicians, corrupt government (maybe allowed to steal from the public), gun black market, drug trade; glad I live in the USA where we don’t have that.

      • Sounds like Thailand is run by Demoncraps like Chiraq, Commifornia, and the new Soviet Socialist Republic (former Commonwealth) of VA.

  7. Thailand has a Muslim problem. Just like many other non muslim countries do. It’s not very well reported on in the West.

  9. Sounds like this is case for Super good guy with a gun. Oh, snap I just got to the part about Tia gun laws are almost same as our laws. Got to hide with their heads close to their asses so they can kiss them good bye if found before the cops get there.

  10. It’s all the NRA. Or white supremacist’s. Or Imperialist’s. Or moose-lims…interesting learning about Thai gun law’s. How could you stop a deranged determined soldier who has ready access to weapons? Beats me…I wonder if they’ll “crack down” on military?

    • Easy answer: Ban shopping malls. They’re evil. Just like guns. If people would just listened to Hollywood actors, the world would be a super safe place.

      • “If people would just listened to Hollywood actors, the world would be a super safe place.”

        It’s getting downright hard to argue with you. I got nothing that beats Hollywood.

      • You mean like John Wick and Paul Kersey? Oh crap, those are characters in movies, not actors. Sorry.

  11. Another tortured soul who snapped upon hearing of Trumps Ukraine meddling.

    This is why we need Michelle Obama to announce her candidacy, with Joe Biden as VP.

    Obama/Biden 2020: Hope For A Change!

  12. Too bad James Campbell wasn’t there with one of his innumerable top shelf guns he certainly would have rode in and saved the day!

  13. Poor guy was probably to close to a radar tower, or used a cellphone too much.

  14. BBC says 1st victims were an army Col and his mother-in-law then he went to the base got another gun and went nuts.. 20 dead reported at 11:00 AM… Apparantly had a dispute with the Col arrived at a final solution to the issue then said “what the fuck” and just started shooting at everything in sight…. It appears that N.H. and Trump are all the BIG cable news networks are aware of this morning…

    • Yeah. Has been reported he shot two at a private house then killed more at the base. He armored up and got more guns from the base. Once he got the military vehicle, arms and uniform he went to the mall. He killed more government [police] along the way. Then he stood around waiting for more people to come and help the injured, once he saw people helping he shot them. He went into the mall and took hostages while the police are inside trying to evacuate everyone and look at the cameras.

      There is some info on the shooter, but I think it’s too early to say exactly. Seems to be a millennial inspired by previous people.

  17. Well, the unseemly mockery I had t-ed up, somebody said already.

    So, to the anti-people n their apparatchiks: we’re not gloating over the victims. Never. That’s your schtick. We’re mocking the clueless, self-serving, self-righteous jackholes who smugly get people killed. We’re mocking you.

    For the victims we have sympathy, empathy, what aid we can muster, n even “thoughts n prayers.” Go ahead n mock that (some more.)

    Some people, sometimes, get crazy, evil, or stupid on people around them. Broad bans don’t stop them. They find a way. We can tell a little who or when, but it’s weak categories ahead of time, n strong indicators at the moment. The B G at a school shooting is the one shooting at kids. Who that’s gonna be ahead of time is way harder to know.

    The vast majority of people never go whack-job or worse. Most people step up to help even strangers. Some even choose to confront violence as it happens. The church protector had half a dozen backups, in an instant. The NZ hero found a credit card machine his least bad choice. Must have been one of those tactical ones. The rampaging panel truck gets stopped, finally, by a sentinal in the crowd. The list goes on. Look for the helpers.

    22,000 Virginians rallied against stupid disarmamant laws outside fences their own govt put up to keep them out, n nothing happened, despite the mocking n taunting in high places. How many were armed? How much mayhem did the overlords predict?

    If you can’t tell exactly who, what or when, are the few bad pennies ahead of time, and many, perhaps most, of the rest have the will, skill, n judgment to do some good the strategy is obvious: empower people. In stead the anti-people restrict, remove, n forbid. If most people use judgment to wield only power they can handle, even more so: get out of their way.

    They think you are only the problem. Too dumb and reactive to protect yourself. A constant risk to go whack-job yourself. Not worth protecting, anyway. Detached from the grand collective good for which your demise is just grist, or an unfortunate egg. We think it’s too bad somebody at that mall didn’t have the tools to stop that guy at 2 dead.

    • “We think it’s too bad somebody at that mall didn’t have the tools to stop that guy at 2 dead.”
      Jim: in some strange winding way that actually made sense, anyway, the guy was geared and armored up, no regular citizen could have been prepared or had a chance to stop him… That is why my EDC piece is a 10mm… power, penetration and internal destruction at least gives me a fighting chance over a 9 or even a 40…

      • “Jim: in some strange winding way that actually made sense…”

        I’m very hit or miss with writing that way. But, it’s useful in polemic n PR. So, strange, winding “thanks” for the complement. I’m glad that worked.

        Take a look at some of the great essayists or speech writers, especially those also journalists, or also write short fiction. (Good fiction labeled as such, not Ben Rhodes, although he n his boss used the technique all the time. Also, “journalism” and “short fiction” used to be two different things.) In some pieces, what hangs together is subtext, while the text seems wandery. Good plays read this way, n Mamet’s essay collection is a brilliant example. Of course, he is a drama writer first.

        I’m no Mamat; who is? Sometimes, I can write something that carries its point in how the surface “action” relates to a subtext. You get to the end and it feels like it makes sense, which it did, but not the way you think.

        As one of our company hereabouts points out: the “pro-” messaging needs to do better to persuade. So, I work different techniques, to see if I can.

  19. “The man who was identified by police as the suspect had posted on his Facebook page earlier in the day that “Death is inevitable for everyone.”

    I’ll interpret as talking about the ongoing and expanding chicom flu. Early on (outside of chicomland) Thailand is taking it harder than many of the other Asia countries.

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