Ex-deputy top cop dies in store plunge
Left notes on railway project ‘cover-up’
Former deputy national police chief Pol Gen Salang Bunnag died on Sunday after falling from the 7th floor of a shopping centre in Nonthaburi. He was 81.
His son, Pol Lt Col Hemmachak Bunnag, admitted yesterday that his father had suffered from depression for several years which may have contributed to his death.
Police have not concluded whether he had committed suicide or suffered a fatal accident. But a video clip released online showed him intentionally letting himself fall.
The clip shows a man walking alone inside a shopping mall. He approaches a glass barrier and climbs over it before falling.
Pak Kret police were informed of a man plunging from the seventh floor at a shopping centre on Chaengwattana Road about 11am. The man was later confirmed as Pol Gen Salang.
Pol Capt Thanawat Cheewitsophon, an officer at Pak
Kret police station, said that police found several handwritten notes signed by Pol Gen Salang near the body.
The letter said he had less than two years to live and he wanted to offer society some benefit when he died.
He urged the public to oppose plans to build a double-track railway line with with a track width of only one metre and elevated trains, but requested the public to push the construction of “autobahn” express highways.
He was known to be a campaigner for railways with 1.435-metre standard gauge track.
In the same note, intended for his friends, children and grandchildren, he begged them to make his letter public as much as possible.
He apologised to his supporters and asked them to be proud of him for resolving to draw public attention to what he described as a media cover-up.
Wassan Kradtung, who witnessed the incident, said she saw the man walking on the seventh floor before he suddenly climbed over the glass barrier and plunged to the ground floor.
Police deputy spokesman Pol Col Kritsana Pattanacharoen said national police chief Chakthip Chaijinda offered deep condolences to Pol Gen Salang’s family.
“He did many good things for the Royal Thai Police and his death is a great loss.”
Pol Gen Salang had a history of taking dramatic actions and was not afraid of taking sides in political standoffs.
As a police lieutenant colonel, he played a role in handling the student protests on Oct 6, 1976, the dramatic incident which resulted in the state’s massacre of students at Thammasat University.
In 2012, the then deputy police chief planned to mobilise government supporters to seal off Government House to cut food and water supplies to People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) demonstrators rallying i nside the compound.
And, although he started a f oundation giving t he V1 Immunitor drug to help HIV/Aids patients, he was also known as a hardline crime buster.
In 1996, Pol Gen Salang led a team to arrest narcotics kingpin Joe Danchang and five other suspects in Suphan Buri, which ended with the controversial extrajudicial killing of all six suspects, which subsequently went to court.
The Suphan Buri district court ruled on Oct 8, 1999 that Joe Danchang and the other suspects grabbed concealed weapons to fight with the police before being killed by the police in the ensuing gun battle.
The father of the Joe Danchang said he accepted the court ruling, which marked the end of the judicial killing case.