Former police officers Panya Khamrab, responsible for the deadly nursery shooting in Thailand, had a long history of drug addiction since his childhood, Thailand’s Nation tv broadcaster reported on Friday, citing the family and classmates of the attacker.
On Thursday, at 12:10 p.m. local time (05:10 GMT), a gunman intruded into a nursery located in the office of the Uthai Sawan Tambon Administra-tion in Na Klang district. As many as 38 people, including 24 children, were killed by the gunman.
“Since he was 15, I have done everything I could so that he stopped consuming drugs. For several months, he gave up using amphetamine, but then he started again,” the mother of the attacker said in an interview with the broadcaster.
Khamrab’s classmates also confirmed that their childhood friend had been a drug addict since he was in high school, according to Nation TV.
“We had rather criminal environment here then, amphetamine was accessible almost everywhere. Many of us tried this drug but there few who really ‘got hooked’ on it. Panya was one of them,” a 34-year-old man, a former classmate of the attacker, who lost four family members in the massacre, told the broadcaster.
On Thursday, Thai police general Paisal Lue-somboon said that the gunman was discharged from his duties as police officer last year on charges of drug abuse.
The Thai police also said that the gunman was under the influence of drugs. After committing the massacre at the day care center, the shooter fled in his pickup truck, which was later found abandoned outside his home. In the house, police officers found the bodies of Khamrab, who committed suicide, his wife, and their child with bullet wounds.—AP
