Bangkok:
The family of a 14-year-old boy who shot dead two people at a Bangkok shopping center apologized for their son’s actions on Friday, in a statement from the Thai government.
Police have charged the teenager, who has not been named, with murder following Tuesday’s attack at the Siam Paragon shopping center that injured five other people.
Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin vowed to take “preventative measures” after the shooting – the third high-profile deadly gun attack to hit the kingdom in the past four years.
“We sincerely apologize to the victims, the families of the deceased and the injured, for the recent shooting incident that occurred as a result of our son’s actions at Siam Paragon Department Store,” said the statement, distributed in Thai and English. and Chinese to reporters from the Thai Foreign Ministry.
“We are deeply saddened and shocked by this incident and accept our responsibility as fully as we can.”
The statement, signed by “the father of the minor perpetrator”, pledged the family’s full cooperation in the police investigation.
The boy, a student at a $4,000-a-year private school just meters from Siam Paragon, has undergone psychiatric tests to see if he would be fit to stand trial.
Investigators said Tuesday that he had been receiving treatment for a mental illness but had stopped taking his medications and that he heard voices telling him to shoot people.
The attack was carried out with a blank pistol modified to fire live bullets. Police have arrested three people suspected of selling a gun and ammunition to the gunman.
The attack on one of Bangkok’s largest and most upmarket shopping centers will be a further blow to Thailand’s efforts to rebuild its vital tourism industry after the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Friday, a senior Thai tourist police officer released a video message to reassure visitors that authorities were doing their utmost to ensure the safety of visitors to the kingdom.
– Gun epidemic –
Thailand has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the region, with an estimated 10 million firearms in circulation – one for every seven residents.
Past promises to tighten gun laws have failed to prevent repeated tragedies.
Friday marks one year since a massacre at a daycare center in the north of the country, in which an ex-police officer, armed with a knife and a firearm, murdered 24 children and 12 adults.
In 2020, a former army officer shot 29 people during a rampage at a shopping mall in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima.
Travel restrictions during the pandemic caused visitor numbers to Thailand to dry up.
China – which sent about 10 million visitors a year to the kingdom before the pandemic – is a crucial market, but the numbers are not returning as quickly as Thai officials would like.
This is partly due to fears in China about whether Thailand is safe, and the fact that one of the mall shooting victims was Chinese is unlikely to improve this situation.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)