Thai teen kills 7 in rampage at home and school before shooting himself

BANGKOK – A Thai teenager killed at least five people and himself at a school outside Bangkok on Aug 7 after fatally shooting his grandparents, police said, in the country’s worst mass killing since 2022.

Two teachers and three other school staff were killed, and police said the 14-year-old shooter, a student, fired at least 26 bullets using a gun that belonged to his grandfather. An additional 34 rounds were found, police said.

Thai officials revised down the death toll to seven from an earlier toll of eight.

Students streamed out of the Debsirin Nonthaburi School, on the north-western outskirts of Bangkok, as the wounded were loaded onto ambulances and teachers hugged each other and cried.

In photos circulated by emergency workers, one person is seen lying on a stretcher outside an ambulance, while another is attended to by a medic.

Police said 23 people were wounded in the incident, the latest in a succession of high-profile shootings in recent years in Thailand, which has by far the largest number of guns in civilian possession in South-east Asia, and among the most per capita in Asia, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey.

One 18-year-old student told Reuters he initially thought he was hearing firecrackers or that someone was banging on something.

“I didn’t think it was a gun at first,” he said. “There were many shots: bang bang bang. Then it went quiet. Then it started again.”

Trirong Phophan, a spokesman for the National Police, told Reuters that 15 people were injured.

Education Minister Prasert Jantararuangtong told Reuters that both teachers and students were among those reported dead.

The Bangkok Post reported that the shooter was in the eighth grade.

This is the second school shooting in Thailand in 2026 after a teacher died and a student was injured in the south of the country in February.

After consultations with officials, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said the gunman had suffered from stress related to his studies and lived with his grandparents, whose bodies police discovered when they visited their home after the school shooting.

He said nine of those wounded were in critical condition, also vowing to introduce a new firearms control law.

Emergency worker Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, 47, described arriving as the shooting was ongoing and said his team treated students with injuries to their backs, chests and arms.

They found a male teacher lying dead on an upper floor of the school, and in another room found a female teacher with wounds to her chest and arm.

“We gave CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) for about 30 minutes and rushed her to the hospital as we could not get her heart rate up, but we tried our best,” he said.

He said he was called to treat the teenage shooter after hearing a final shot.

“We rushed up and found that the perpetrator had shot himself in the right side of his head and collapsed. When we got up there, we checked his pulse, and he still had one, so we started CPR.”

The suspect was then taken to hospital, he said.

In the 2025 academic year, the school had an enrolment of around 3,100 students and 147 teachers, according to the district authorities.

“This is terrible for something like this to happen,” Anutin told reporters. “I’m sad for those who died and sad for something like this to happen in our country.”

History of shootings

Gun ownership and gun violence are not uncommon in Thailand, which has seen a series of deadly shootings over the past six years, with children among the victims.

Thailand’s worst mass killing by a single perpetrator in its recent history took place in 2022, when a former policeman ran amok in a three-hour gun-and-knife attack in the north-east that killed 37 people, including 22 children who were stabbed as they slept at a daycare centre.

A gunman killed five people, including security guards and a vendor, at a Bangkok market in July 2025 before turning the gun on himself, while a teacher died in the southern city of Hat Yai in February 2026 when a shooter opened fire at the school where she worked.

In 2020, a soldier killed 29 people in a shooting rampage in Nakhon Ratchasima.

And in 2023, a 14-year-old used a modified handgun to kill two people and wound five others at a luxury Bangkok shopping centre.

After the 2023 shooting, Anutin, who was then serving as interior minister, ordered a raft of gun control measures, including a short-term ban on new licences, import restrictions, and the banning of people under 20 years old from shooting ranges.

Longer-term measures also included a medical certificate assessing the mental health and psychological condition of gun owners, as well as a specified validity period for some gun licences.

Thailand had an estimated 10.3 million firearms in civilian possession, equating to around 15 guns per 100 residents, the highest rate in South-east Asia by a wide margin, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey.

REUTERS