The cremations of the victims of the Debsirin school shooting in the Thai province of Nonthaburi had barely begun when another body was added to the country’s rising toll from gun violence.
On Monday morning, a former MP for Nonthaburi fired four rounds at a local official inside a car – then calmly strode away, the pistol tucked back into his belt.
Police Colonel Thongchai Yenprasert was shot over an alleged money dispute by 71-year-old Chalong Riewrang, a three-time lawmaker with deep political influence, who then called a television host to confess his alleged crime.
Thongchai, 71, was the 12th victim of gun killings in under three weeks in Nonthaburi alone, a small province of a quarter of a million people just outside Bangkok.
On July 21, a young man was gunned down by a masked gunman on a motorbike in Pak Kret. A week later, a former bank manager killed two relatives and injured four others in a bullet-strewn dispute over land.