Thai police to get mental all round well being checks just immediately after fatal standoff

Police in Thailand will be subject to random checks of their physical and mental all round well being just immediately after a 27-hour standoff precisely exactly where a senior officer holed up and fired a gun into the air till he was subdued by fellow officers

March 16, 2023, 11:41 AM ET

• 3 min study

BANGKOK — Police in Thailand will be subject to random checks of their physical and mental all round well being, officials stated Thursday, just immediately after a 27-hour standoff in which a senior officer holed up and fired a gun into the air till he was subdued by fellow officers.

Police Lt. Col. Kitikarn Sangbun died in a hospital Wednesday evening of several gunshot wounds sustained in the course of the standoff at his property on the fringes of the capital Bangkok, stated police Col. Rangsan Sornsing, superintendent of the police station in the Sai Mai neighborhood precisely exactly where the standoff took spot.

Kitikarn had been suffering from mental all round well being challenges and strain in his execute and person life, police stated, with out elaborating.

Thai media reported that the police Inspector General’s Workplace has ordered random all round well being checks be carried out on officers nationwide to allow hold away from connected scenarios. Members of the public are also encouraged to report conditions precisely exactly where they are concerned about officers’ mental all round well being.

Kitikarn had holed himself up in his property Tuesday when fellow officers came to take him for psychiatric therapy, stated deputy national police chief Gen. Torsak Sukvimol and other officials. He fired into the air and in the path of police who arrived at the scene.

Police evacuated and cordoned off the surrounding area as they attempted pretty a handful of approaches to apprehend him. In addition to initially functioning with tear gas and stun guns in an perform to evacuate him, a junior officer sang for Kitikarn in an attempt to calm him down, intermittently asking him to turn himself in.

But as the confrontation escalated, shots have been exchanged involving Kitikarn and the officers besieging him.

Video of the finish of the confrontation released by the police showed Kitikarn, clad in shorts and a T-shirt and clutching a carving knife in his left hand, smashing by way of a second-story window and leaping down into a compact, cluttered backyard. He lay dazed for pretty a handful of seconds till police in comprehensive tactical gear rushed out from the house’s back door, seizing him roughly.

Torsak stated an autopsy performed Thursday showed that Kitikarn had suffered six gunshot wounds and died from blood loss.

Torsak and other senior police officers expressed regret that the circumstance turned deadly, saying that police applied genuine bullets only just immediately after exhausting other signifies to get the circumstance beneath handle.

Thailand’s deadliest massacre took spot in October when a former police officer shot and slashed to death 36 people at a daycare center. The country’s prior worst mass killing involved a disgruntled soldier who opened fire in and about a mall in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima in 2020, killing 29 people and holding off security forces for some 16 hours prior to sooner or later becoming killed by them.