Ambulances wait outside an exit of the Siam Paragon Mall in Bangkok while shoppers rush out Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023. Hundreds of shoppers fled the major shopping mall on Tuesday afternoon after what sounded like gunshots were heard inside. It was not immediately clear if shots had been fired, though police said there were injuries and some frightened shoppers were still hunkering down inside the mall. (AP Photo/Tian Macleod Ji)
BANGKOK (AP) – A shooter opened fire inside a major shopping mall in the center of Thailand’s capital Tuesday afternoon, killing at least two people before being apprehended, authorities said.
Police said a suspect was taken into custody less than an hour after the first reported gunshots at the Siam Paragon Mall, long been seen as one of Bangkok’s biggest and most upscale shopping destinations.
Video uploaded to social media and broadcast on television showed a long-haired teenage boy in the custody of police. Major Thai media said he was 14 years old, though recently appointed police chief Torsak Sukvimol confirmed only that he is a minor and appeared to be suffering from mental illness.
Torsak said two people had been killed, a visitor from China and a Myanmar national. Earlier, Yutthana Sretthanan, director of Bangkok’s Erawan Emergency Medical Center, had said three people were killed and six were injured. There was no explanation of the discrepancy, though Yutthana later supported the police number.
Police spokesman Archayon Kraithong told reporters the situation was under control at the mall, which sells high-end fashions and luxury cars, and includes a cinema, an aquarium and the attached five-star Siam Kempinski Hotel.
Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin told reporters that he was informed by police that one of the dead was a Chinese tourist about 30 years old.
“I would like to express my deepest condolences to the family of the deceased following the shooting inside Siam Paragon,” Srettha, who took office in August, said in an earlier statement. “I would like to give my moral support to the families of all who died and were injured.”
Gun violence is not uncommon in Thailand, though mass shootings are rare.
The incident happened days before Thais were planning to mark the anniversary of the country’s biggest mass killing by an individual, a grisly gun and knife attack at a rural day care center in a northeastern province that killed 36 people, most of them preschoolers, on Oct. 6, 2022.
Tuesday’s shooting prompted authorities to temporarily shut access to the nearby Siam Square elevated train stop, preventing commuters from exiting as the evening rush hour began and intense rain pounded the city, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.
First responders could be seen entering the mall as sirens wailed outside.
Witnesses said crowds of people left the building, one of several shopping centers in the area popular with tourists and well-heeled Thais alike.
Chinese tourist Liu Shiying told the AP that she saw people running and saying someone had opened fire. She said she heard gunshots and an alarm ringing, and that the lights in the mall went out.
“We’re temporarily hiding. Who dares to go out?” she said while taking cover. She was later able to leave.
Gautam Vora, 45, an Indian national who works in finance in Bangkok, was at the mall with his wife and child. He said it was “quite scary,” even though he was initially unsure whether he had heard gunshots or “somebody playing a hoax with some firecrackers.”
“Everybody was screaming and running,” he said. “There was a lot of chaos and that was almost like a stampede.”
“I don’t think they were well prepared for this,” he added. “I think most of the staff inside the shopping mall were confused and they were running helter-skelter, too.”
Multiple videos uploaded to social media showed people running out of the building, and several showed a person dressed in a baseball cap, dark shirt and camouflage pants inside the mall, holding a handgun. A video believed to be of the shooter after his arrest showed a long-haired boy wearing glasses dressed like that, with an American flag on his cap. Videos and photos also showed the pistol he was said to have been carrying before he was disarmed.
In 2020, a disgruntled soldier opened fire in and around a mall in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima, killing 29 people and holding off security forces for some 16 hours before eventually being killed by them.
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Associated Press journalists Penny Yi Wang, Adam Schreck, Grant Peck and Jerry Harmer contributed reporting.
