Fourteen-Year-Old Boy Kills Grandparents, Then Opens Fire at Thai School, Leaving Six Dead
Sandego.net – A devastating school shooting in Thailand has left six people dead and more than twenty wounded, marking one of the deadliest such incidents in the country’s recent history. The attack began when a fourteen-year-old boy allegedly killed his grandparents at their home before storming Debsirin Nonthaburi School with a handgun.
The suspect, who police confirmed remains alive despite earlier reports suggesting he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, opened fire on students and staff during what appeared to be a normal school day. The incident unfolded around 10 a.m. local time in the Bang Kruai district of Nonthaburi province, located just north of Bangkok.
Chaos Erupts at Secondary School
Debsirin Nonthaburi School, a well-established secondary institution serving approximately three thousand students, became a scene of terror as gunshots echoed through hallways and classrooms. Video footage captured inside one classroom, later verified by CNN, showed terrified students pressing themselves beneath desks, crying as gunfire rang out nearby.
Additional footage revealed students fleeing the building while staff members guided them to safety. The youngest victim of the shooting was only twelve years old, authorities confirmed. Of the six fatalities, three were students and three were teachers, according to Lieutenant General Trairong Phiwphan, a police spokesperson.
“It was total chaos,” an unnamed rescue worker told Reuters upon arriving at the scene, describing how emergency personnel administered first aid to students suffering wounds to their backs, chests, and arms.
Nine of the wounded remain in critical condition, while most casualties are teenagers aged between twelve and seventeen, according to the provincial Emergency Operations Center.
The Suspect’s Path to the School
Police have yet to determine exactly how the fourteen-year-old gained access to the weapon he used in the rampage. Authorities confirmed he had been living with his grandparents rather than with his parents. A photograph provided to CNN by a Bangkok police official shows a single handgun and scattered ammunition rounds on the school floor.
Emergency worker Kiatikhun Verapongpradith described performing CPR on the wounded gunman after finding him collapsed with a gunshot wound to the right side of his head.
“As soon as we saw signs of life, we had the team bring a board to carry him to the hospital,” Verapongpradith told Reuters.
Doctors are currently providing emergency treatment to the suspect, who remains in critical condition.
Parents Rush to Scene as Shock Spreads
News of the shooting spread rapidly, drawing concerned parents to the school. The son of CNN’s senior travel producer Karla Cripps attends the school but was overseas at the time of the attack, which began at approximately 10 a.m.
“My son called me from Japan in a panic, telling me that he’d heard there was a shooting at his school. The kids were told to lock down in their classrooms, and he obviously was very upset,” Cripps said from outside the school.
Cripps described a somber atmosphere as ambulances continued to arrive and depart, with parents comforting their children. She noted that her son heard his friend’s brother was among the injured and hospitalized.
An eighteen-year-old student told Reuters he initially mistook the gunfire for firecrackers. “Then it started getting more frequent, like ‘bang, bang, bang’ and then it went quiet at one point. And the shooting started again,” the student recounted.
Thailand’s Gun Culture and School Safety Concerns
Gun ownership remains notably high in Thailand compared to other Southeast Asian nations. Data from the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey indicates that Thailand possessed more than 10.3 million civilian-owned firearms as of 2017, equating to approximately fifteen guns for every one hundred people.
The country ranks as the second-highest in Southeast Asia for gun-related homicides, trailing only the Philippines, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s 2019 Global Burden of Disease database.
This shooting follows several recent violent incidents. In February, a teacher died and a student was wounded in southern Thailand’s Hat Yai district when a gunman opened fire at a school. The 2022 childcare center massacre in northeastern Thailand, which claimed thirty-six lives including twenty-four children, remains the country’s deadliest school-related incident.
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul expressed his grief over the tragedy on Friday afternoon.
“This is horrible, it shouldn’t have happened,” the Prime Minister said.
Thailand’s Central Investigation Bureau confirmed that the situation is now under control. As investigations continue into how the fourteen-year-old accessed the weapon and what may have motivated the attack, families across the nation are grappling with renewed concerns about school safety and gun regulation in a country where firearms are deeply embedded in daily life.
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