Brutal pool villa murder, holey casket, one row too many

Social media post invites peril

A man shot and killed his ex-lover through this air vent.

Teerasak ‘Jeap’ Chobprai

An unhappy gunman turned up at a pool villa where his former girlfriend was staying and shot her dead, with her new boyfriend only narrowly escaping the same fate.

Teerasak “Jeap” Chobprai, 42, from Ratchaburi, turned up at the Cha-am, Phetchaburi villa on May 7, surprised his ex-girlfriend, dessert trader Khanittha “Nid” Suwanlue, 33, and shot her twice in the back, killing her.

He was led there by a social media post put up by the victim herself. She had gathered with a group of 14 friends and family including her new boyfriend, “Ong”, to celebrate a birthday, and posted about it.

Nid left Mr Jeap more than a year ago as he used to beat her up, news reports said. However, Mr Jeap couldn’t let the relationship go.

Mr Jeap saw the post and tracked his ex-girlfriend to the spot. When he arrived, Ong could see the visitor was drunk and carrying a firearm.

“He asked where Nid was, and I told him there was no one here by that name,” Ong said daringly. Mr Jeap, he said, did not appear to recognise him as her new boyfriend.

Nid, who decided she did not want to see Mr Jeap and did not reveal her presence, hid in the kitchen at the rear of the villa.

Mr Jeap, who told Ong that he intended to hang about anyway hoping to meet her, spotted her from a narrow opening behind the building.

Angry he had been misled, he shot her through an air vent. That done, he strode back inside the villa, held his gun to the head of a pregnant woman who was also among the guests, and demanded to know: “Where’s her new boyfriend?”

Another guest exclaimed: “Hey, she’s pregnant. You’re not going to shoot a pregnant woman, are you?”

Mr Jeap decided better of it, and fled to Kanchanaburi, where police found him later.

Talking to reporters, the suspect’s family presented a tangled picture of the couple’s relationship, saying Nid’s elder brother had conned Mr Jeap out of money, some of which she spent on entertaining other men.

Relatives of the victim, meanwhile, said Mr Jeap had no work and was himself constantly asking her for money when they were together.

At the police station where the suspect was taken for questioning following his arrest, cameras caught a man identified as Beer, who was apparently Nid’s first husband and with whom she had three children. Later she took up with Mr Jeap and then Ong. “Hey, Jeap, you’ve left them as orphans!” he shouted at the suspect angrily.

Police charged Mr Jeap with premeditated murder and firearms offences.

They’re just air holes

The garment factory owner charges into the casket shop firing his gun.

A Bang Khun Thian garment factory owner says he had no intention to cause harm when he shot up a funeral casket store belonging to his neighbour, who now has a white casket with seven bullet holes to show for it.

Dramatic CCTV footage shows Saman Boonyor, 46, charging into the Po Suk Heeb Sob casket store in soi Ekkachai 76 of Bang Bon on May 5 with a handgun, firing it in the direction of the caskets which are stacked on top of each other.

A young employee, bare-chested Anucha Kongjai, 19, who was having a sleep at the time, flees in fear of his life.

Mr Saman had just found out about a parking dispute involving his store and staff from the casket shop and came in to express his anger. Staff from both shops, which sit opposite each other, park in front of the garment store as space is scarce.

Saman Boonyor

On this occasion, Khanittha Sawangpop, owner of the casket shop, said her staff had parked a sedan in front of the garment shop. Staff there asked them to move the vehicle so they could store a motorcycle inside their place.

“I am not sure if the person behind the wheel could drive or not, but he bumped into the motorcycle, which set off a row,” she told reporters.

The person taking the motorcycle inside the garment store also revved the engine provocatively, which further stoked tensions.

Moments later, Mr Saman strides into the casket store firing, and shortly after walks back out again. He calls someone on the phone while standing outside the shop as if nothing had happened, media reports said.

Speaking to reporters, Mr Saman denied intending harm, saying he aimed merely to intimidate. Police charged him with firearms offences.

Debt woes end in death

A Loei man shot his wife dead by the side of their house then took his own life.

A Loei man shot his wife dead then took his own life amid a row over money, after discovering she had borrowed against their pickup without telling him.

The body of Boonperm Kanphan, 64, a former vehicle spray painter, was found inside the couple’s home in Wang Saphung district on May 9. He had shot himself in the mouth with a shotgun.

The weapon was still in his left hand. Police say there was no sign of a struggle and believe he used his right thumb to pull the trigger. Earlier, they say, he killed his wife outside.

Later, relatives found the body of his wife, Payom Kanphan, 57, by the side of the house. She had been shot in the left temple.

Neighbours did not hear the sound of gunfire. Boonperm’s niece, aged eight, was playing at the house that evening and noticed him lying on the ground but did not see any blood. She told her mother, but she thought nothing of it.

It wasn’t until the next morning when Payom’s younger sister Sarida Sangsrinual, 53, paid a visit that she found Boonperm’s body and alerted police. Later she went in search of her sister and found her body outside.

She said the couple argued often over finances, and that Payom, without telling her husband, had a couple of days before quietly refinanced their pickup. She suspects the revelation they were now even deeper in debt as a result set off the latest row.

Boonperm, his former workmates say, was a happy-go-lucky type who quit spray painting after developing kidney disease.

He turned into a recluse and later told a large amount of property to build the couple’s home.

However, as the disease progressed he needed dialysis every five hours, and the couple quickly ran out of money.