Thailand Mourns After Ex-Policeman Killed 24 Children Who Were Still Sleeping In Day Care School

The world was shaken yesterday at the news of the massacre of 24 children in a nursery daycare center in the small town of Uthai Sawan, Thailand. This is the nation’s deadliest shooting rampage.

Devastated families in north-eastern Thailand have been mourning the nursery school children and other victims who were killed by a sacked police officer.

Pink and white coffins adorned with gold and bearing the bodies of the 22 children killed in a gun and knife rampage in Thailand were loaded onto a truck late on Thursday and driven away in the darkness.

The children were killed on Thursday by a former policeman, who witnesses said burst into a daycare center and started shooting and slashing those who were inside.

On Friday morning, royal and government representatives stood in lines to lay wreaths at ceremonial tables in front of the Young Children’s Development Centre’s main door.

They were followed by weeping family members, who gathered their hands in prayer before laying white flowers on the wooden floor.

“I cried until I had no more tears coming out of my eyes. They are running through my heart,” said Seksan Sriraj, 28, whose pregnant wife was a teacher at the center and was due to give birth this month.

“My wife and my child have gone to a peaceful place. I am alive and will have to live. If I can’t go on, my wife and my child will be worried about me, and they won’t be reborn in the next life. That’s about it.”

Altogether, 36 people were killed by Panya Khamrapm, who police said was discharged from duty last year for drug use and had attended a court hearing on a narcotics charge just moments before the attack.

After returning home, police said 34yrs old Panya killed his wife and child before turning the gun on himself.

The children, mainly two and three-year-olds, had been taking an afternoon nap.

The body of one boy dressed in a Manchester United Shirt was seen on a Winnie the Pooh bed cover in a room with walls decorated with cartoon animals.

“They were little kids who were still sleeping.”

In an interview with Amarin TV, Satita Boonsom, a childcare worker at the daycare center, said the gunman after arriving at the scene shot a child and his father in front of the building before walking toward the classroom.

She said the teachers inside locked the door but he forced his way in and attacked the children and teachers with a knife and firearm.

She said the center usually has around 70 to 80 children but there were fewer at the time of the attack because the semester was closed for older children.

“They wouldn’t have survived,” she said.

Mass shootings are rare but not unheard of in Thailand, which has one of the highest civilian gun ownership rates in Asia, with 15.1 weapons per 100 population compared to only 0.3 in Singapore and 0.25 in Japan.