POLICE ALERT AFTER KIDNAP ATTEMPTS
>> The national police chief has ordered security to be tightened at Sanam Luang following an attempted kidnapping of young children taken to the area by a woman paying respects to the late King.
Pol Gen Chakthip Chaijinda also instructed the Metropolitan Police Bureau to set up a centre to handle cases of people reported missing, said Pol Col Krisana Phat-thanacharoen, a deputy spokesman for the Royal Thai Police.
The centre will be set up in the same tent that the Police General Hospital is using to provide health and medical services to mourners at Sanam Luang.
Police are advising parents taking young children to the mourning ceremony to place a card containing names, contact addresses and telephone numbers in their children’s pockets to make it easier for police to identify them if they get lost, Pol Col Krisana said.
A huge number of visitors are expected at Sanam Luang over this long weekend as more mourners from other provinces are likely to travel to Bangkok, he said.
On Thursday, a woman posted on her Facebook page about the suspected kidnapping attempts on her two young children. Social media-based news agencies picked up her story.
The Mirror Foundation’s missing children’s information centre said it had received a complaint regarding the kidnapping attempt on Thursday.
Foundation members were told that the mother and her children were walking in the Sanam Luang area when a man in his fifties approached her older child and patted his face as if they knew each other very well.
“There, we meet again,” the man was quoted as saying.
The mother tried to tell the man she didn’t know him but he asked why she was acting like she didn’t recognise him. The mother then decided to leave.
Shortly afterwards, the mother encountered a female stranger who approached her younger child in a pram and began patting the child’s face as if she knew the child well, the centre said.
That prompted the mother to shout out for help, which scared away the woman and a male stranger. The foundation has forwarded the complaint to the Welfare of Women and Children Subdivision.