BBC:
Just three days after a 14-year-old opened fire at his school, killing eight people before shooting himself, another incident in the same province illustrated even more starkly Thailand’s troubled relationship with guns.
Chalong Riewrang, a 71-year-old former politician, went into the local administration office to discuss a large sum of money he says he was owed by the administration chief, Thongchai Yenprasert, a man he called his friend.
The conversation ended abruptly with Chalong pulling out a gun and firing four shots through the window of Thongchai’s car, hitting him and his driver. Thongchai later died from his wounds.
Chalong then left the scene, and phoned a startled journalist he knew who was in the middle of a live broadcast on YouTube, to tell her what had happened.
After the police intercepted him and took him to the station, he was allowed to speak to reporters, casually smoking a cigarette and seemingly unperturbed by what he had done.
He explained that he had “not intended to shoot his friend”, but opened fire when the driver also pulled a gun. The police did find two guns in the car, but said they were not in a state where they could have been fired.
This was not the only gun fatality in Thailand on that day. In Prachinburi, east of Bangkok, a police sergeant shot his wife in the head while arguing with her as she was driving their car to pick up their young son. The car crashed and the sergeant then shot himself in the head. His wife died in hospital.
