Thai cave boy tragedy at English soccer school
Captain of rescued football team dies of ‘head injury’
A TEENAGE footballer who was among 12 boys rescued from a flooded Thai cave complex in 2018 has died in Britain.
Duangphet Phromthep, known as Dom, 17, was months into a scholarship at a private football academy. He died on Tuesday after reportedly suffering a head injury.
Dom, then 13, was captain of Thai football team Wild Boars who were trapped in a cave system with their coach after heavy storms. The team’s desperate plight – and eventual rescue after two weeks – gripped the world.
Leicestershire Police said they were called to Brooke House College in Market Harborough on Sunday over concerns for a pupil. A spokesman added: ‘The pupil – a 17-year-old boy – was taken to hospital. He has since died.’ Police stressed the death was not the result of a football injury and was ‘not being treated as suspicious’.
Last night the Thai charity which supported Dom’s scholarship said he was found unconscious on the floor of his dormitory by a teacher on Sunday and taken by ambulance to hospital.
Kiatisuk Senamuang, founder of the Zico Foundation, told a press conference Dom was treated at the hospital until Tuesday but did not respond to treatment. Mr Senamuang said he was ‘shocked and stunned’. He added: ‘My thoughts are with his family and friends. I think back to his dream of becoming a professional footballer, representing his country and his voice keeps speaking in my head.’
Safe: Dom, now 17, after rescue
Ian Smith, principal at Brooke House College, said staff and pupils were ‘devastated’, adding that Dom’s death ‘has left our college community deeply saddened and shaken’.
The college, which charges boarders £39,000 a year, offers pupils, aged 12 to 20, from around the world a programme of lessons in the morning and football in the afternoon. Thrilled Dom announced on Instagram that he had won a scholarship at the college last August, saying: ‘Today my dream has come true.’
The Wild Boars had cycled to the Tham Luang cave system in system in Chiang Rai, northern Thailand, but became trapped by flooding. The boys, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-yearold coach spent nine days in darkness without food before being found by an international search and rescue team two and a half miles from the entrance to the caves.
Their ‘extraction’ from the complex started six days later in an operation during which a retired Thai diver died. The boys were sedated before they were taken out of the cave, leaving hospital weeks later. They were later invited to attend a Manchester United match and their story was the subject of books, documentaries and Netflix drama series Thai Cave Rescue.
Not being treated as suspicious