BANGKOK: Thai police on Thursday arrested two men accused of selling a gun to a 14-year-old suspected of carrying out a shooting attack at a Bangkok mall that left two people dead.
The teenager has been charged with murder over Tuesday’s attack at the Siam Paragon mall, which police say was carried out with a blank-firing pistol modified to shoot live rounds.
Officers in Yala province in Thailand’s deep south arrested two men in the early hours of Thursday on suspicion of selling a gun to the boy.
Hundreds of shoppers fled the packed upmarket mall in fear as shots rang out on Tuesday afternoon.
Seven people were shot in total, and a woman from China and another from Myanmar were killed.
The 14-year-old suspect has been charged with attempted murder, carrying and firing a gun in a public place, and owning an unlicensed firearm. He is undergoing psychiatric testing to see if he is fit to stand trial — he had previously been receiving treatment for a mental illness but had stopped taking medication, according to police.
The shooting has sparked fresh calls for tighter gun control in a country awash with both legal and illegal weapons. It came days before the first anniversary of the deadliest massacre in modern Thai history, in which an ex-policeman armed with a gun and knife attacked a nursery in the country’s north, murdering 24 children and 12 adults.
According to an international database, Thailand has an estimated 10 million guns in circulation — one for every seven citizens, and one of the highest rates of ownership in the region. In 2020, a soldier gunned down 29 people in a mall rampage at Nakhon Ratchasima. Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on Wednesday vowed to bring in “preventative measures” to prevent further tragedies. – AFP