Thailand school shooting: Teen kills grandparents at home, 5 at campus

A teenage Thai student killed at least five people and himself at a school outside Bangkok on Friday after fatally shooting his grandparents, police said, in the Southeast Asian nation's worst mass killing in nearly four years. Those killed at the school were all teachers and staff, and police said the 14-year-old shooter fired at least 26 bullets using a gun that belonged to his grandfather. An additional 34 rounds were found.

Students streamed out of the Debsirin Nonthaburi School, on the capital's northwestern outskirts, as the wounded were loaded onto ambulances and teachers hugged each other and cried. In photos circulated by emergency workers, one person is seen lying down on a stretcher outside an ambulance, while another is attended to by a medic. Police said 23 people were wounded in the incident, the latest in a succession of mass shootings in recent years in Thailand, which has by far the largest number of guns in civilian possession in Southeast Asia, and among the most per capita in Asia, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey.

One 18-year-old student said he initially thought there were firecrackers going off or someone banging an object. "I didn't think it was a gun at first," he said.

"There were many shots: bang, bang, bang. Then it went quiet. Then it started again."

"This is terrible for something like this to happen," PM Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters. After consultations with officials, Anutin said the gunman had suffered from stress related to his studies and lived with his grandparents, whose bodies police discovered when they visited their home after the school shooting. He said nine of those wounded were in critical condition. He also vowed to introduce a new firearms control law.

Emergency worker Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, 47, described arriving as the shooting was ongoing and his team treated students with injuries in the back, chest and arms. They found a teacher dead on an upper floor of the school, and in another room a female teacher with chest and arm wounds.

Kiatikhun said he was called to treat the teenage shooter after hearing a final shot. "We rushed up and found that the perpetrator had shot himself in the right side of the head and collapsed. When we got up there, we checked his pulse; he still had one, so we started CPR."

2nd school shooting this year

It is the second school shooting in Thailand this year after a teacher died and a student was injured in the south of the country in February.

History of shootings

Thailand's worst mass killing by a single perpetrator in its recent history took place in 2022, when a sacked former policeman ran amok in a three-hour gun-and-knife attack in the northeast that killed 36 people, including his wife, son and 22 children stabbed as they slept at a daycare centre.

In 2020, a soldier killed 29 people in a shooting rampage in Nakhon Ratchasima that included a shopping mall, while in July last year, a gunman killed five people at a Bangkok market. In 2023, a 14-year-old killed two people and wounded five others at a luxury Bangkok shopping centre, using a modified handgun that police said was likely purchased online. Thailand had an estimated 10.3 million firearms held by civilians, equating to around 15 guns per 100 residents, the Small Arms Survey estimated.

Students streamed out of the Debsirin Nonthaburi School, on the capital's northwestern outskirts, as the wounded were loaded on to ambulances and teachers hugged each other and cried. In photos circulated by emergency workers, one person is seen lying down on a stretcher outside an ambulance, while another is attended to by a medic. Police said 23 people were wounded in the incident, the latest in a succession of mass shootings in recent years in Thailand, which has by far the largest number of guns in civilian possession in Southeast Asia, and among the most per capita in Asia, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey.

One 18-year-old student said he initially thought there were firecrackers going off or someone banging an object. "I didn't think it was a gun at first," he said. "There were many shots: bang, bang, bang. Then it went quiet. Then it started again."

2nd school shooting this yearIt is the second school shooting in Thailand this year after a teacher died and a student was injured in the south of the country in Feb.

History of shootingsThailand's worst mass killing by a single perpetrator in its recent history took place in 2022, when a sacked former policeman ran amok in a three-hour gun-and-knife attack in the northeast that killed 36 people including his wife, son and 22 children stabbed as they slept at a daycare centre.