A 14-year-old boy has been arrested in Thailand for allegedly stabbing a Thai-Australian schoolmate to death following a long-running feud, police said on Friday.
The suspect told investigators that he and the victim harboured a mutual dislike from school and agreed via the Line messaging app to meet outside a grocery store near their homes on Tuesday in Sattahip, Chonburi province, said Police Colonel Tanapol Klinkesorn, director of the Sattahip police station.
The suspect appeared to be losing the fight because the other boy was bigger, but he rushed to his car to grab a cooking knife and stabbed the victim in the back, Tanapol said. The victim was also 14, but the suspect was an eighth-grader while the victim was a year behind him. Their names have not been released due to their age, but the Australian Embassy confirmed the victim had dual nationality.
The boy was found lying at the entrance to the store with the knife in his back and its broken handle on the ground, according to the Sawang Rojanatham Rescue Foundation, whose EMS workers rushed to the scene. The suspect, accompanied by his parents, surrendered to police about an hour after the stabbing.
Police charged him with causing fatal physical harm to another person and a weapons offence. He was released on 10,000 baht ($295) bail on Wednesday by the Chonburi Juvenile and Family Court. The maximum sentence under the charges is 15 years’ imprisonment, and police are investigating further.
Adolescent violence is not rare in Thailand, but fatal cases usually involve rival gangs of older students. Sattahip is about 114 kilometres (71 miles) southeast of Bangkok.
