Massacre takes toll on shattered Thais
SIRIRAT Kualraksa blinked back tears as the ambulances delivered gurneys bearing cloth-shrouded bodies to the morgue of a public hospital on Sunday, hours after a vengeful Thai soldier killed 29 and wounded dozens in a shopping mall rampage.
Like scores of other bereaved families and a shocked nation she struggled to come to terms with the senseless massacre.
Sirirat lost her sister, brother-in-law and young nephew in the attack. She was among dozens of victims’ relatives sitting outside the morgue, waiting to fill out paperwork to lay claim to their loved ones and receive compensation from a government criminal victims’ fund.
On Facebook, she had talked with her sister, 33year-old Papatchaya Kualraksa, as she hid with her husband and their two-yearold in a supermarket storage room. Sirirat advised her sister to nurse her son so he wouldn’t make noise and risk revealing the family to the gunman, whose rounds of automatic fire echoed around the seven-storey mall.
In a Facebook call, Papatchaya told her sister that she was scared. “Gunshots could be heard endlessly and loudly,” Sirirat said.
But there was no sign of a rescue. Still, “both of us thought that she would be able to get out”.
They exchanged several Facebook messages before Papatchaya went quiet.
About 13 hours later, the standoff ended when Thai special forces fatally shot the gunman, Sergeant Major Jakrapanth Thomma. Sirirat, 43, later received photos from a friend, an officer who responded to the mall, of her dead sister, arms wrapped around her two-year-old, and the boy’s father nearby.
At the hospital, a team from the government mental health department handed out cake and tissues, screening people for abnormal expressions of grief. Other people staged bedside vigils for injured relatives.
The hospital’s lone forensic pathologist was joined by two others from out of town, but officials said it could be days before autopsies were complete and the bodies could be handed over.
Officials said the gunman was angry over a financial dispute, first killing his commanding officer and the officer’s mother-in-law and then seizing several weapons and ammunition from his army camp.
He opened fire and wounded at least three soldiers before fleeing in a stolen vehicle, shooting randomly as he drove to the mall.
Gun violence is not unheard of in Thailand, and the massacre in Nakhon Ratchasima comes just a month after another 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 two-year-old boy, and wounded four others as he robbed a jewellery store.