Teacher shot in face as students brawl

Teen dies, police raid bus in latest violence

Something is wrong with Thailand's laws/punishment and need to be corrected very quickly.
(Nonthaburi police chief Surachai Suepsuk said the current punishment for student brawls, fining those in possession of weapons 100 baht each and informing their schools and parents, was not enough to curb student violence).


A teacher was shot in the face as he tried to stop a brawl among 50 vocational students yesterday morning at a crowded bus stop in Nonthaburi, police said.

Wichian Patchakhiao of the Army Transportation Engineering School sustained a wound below his eye after a student fired a pen gun, a single-shot weapon, during a clash between students from two schools. Police said 17 students from Phraramhok Technology School and Nakornluang Polytechnic College were arrested at the scene of the clash in front of Karun Sueksa School in Muang district. The pen gun attacker escaped.

Police seized 21 knives, an axe and a home-made ping pong bomb.

Nonthaburi police chief Surachai Suepsuk said the current punishment for student brawls, fining those in possession of weapons 100 baht each and informing their schools and parents, was not enough to curb student violence.

In a separate incident, a Phraramhok Technology School student was shot dead and his four friends, including a girl, were injured by a gunman near the Rama VII bridge in the early hours yesterday.

Patiphong Bunthot, 18, died as his friends were trying to flag down a taxi to take him and their injured friends to a nearby hospital.

The group of nine teens was attacked by one of two men on a motorcycle as they were eating and drinking at a food stall they regularly frequent.

In related news, late Wednesday night police stopped a No. 101 bus near the Dao Khanong area after they were informed the bus had been "hijacked" by vocational students. Fourteen male and six female students appeared frightened when the officers raided the bus. An inspection found knives in some of the students' bags.

"If I didn't carry a knife, I would be dead," one of the girls told the police.

The students are from Krungthon Technology School. They got on the bus on Phetkasem Road and told the driver to switch off the headlights as he was driving to Taksin Road, according to police.

The students claimed they wanted the lights off to avoid being targeted by students from rival schools, which would endanger other passengers on the bus, according to police.