Elephant stabs mahout to death with its tusks in southern Thailand

An elephant stabbed its mahout – or elephant trainer – to death with its tusks yesterday morning in Nahkhon Si Thammarat province in southern Thailand. The elephant stood watch over the man’s corpse for hours, said police.

Yesterday at 10.30am, officers from Chawang Police Station received a report that a man had died after he was pierced by his own elephant’s tusks. A team of police and rescue workers rushed to the scene on a hill in the forest, where they found a big elephant guarding the body of its mahout Chaichana Matchanimwong. Chaichana’s body was covered in wounds, said police.

Officers said they tried to separate the elephant from the mahout’s body, but there was not much they could do. The elephant stood guard over the body for hours and eventually walked away into the forest.

Police were finally able to retrieve Chaichana’s body and take it to the hospital for an autopsy to be carried out. After the autopsy is complete, Chaichana’s body will be taken to his relatives for religious ceremonies to take place.

Locals told police that Chaichana had taken the elephant up the hill to work on a field. Police suspect the elephant was stressed from working and got mad at its mahout, eventually stabbing him to death.

It is not clear where the elephant went or what will happen to it now. It may not survive on its own in the wild if it has been a working elephant for a long time.

In Thailand, people are trampled to death by elephants fairly regularly. Last year, a man stopped on the roadside to feed an elephant named Cherry in Nakhon Ratchasima province and was trampled to death. His wife later filed a 21 million baht lawsuit against the resort where the elephant worked, claiming that she had faced a lot of hardship at the hands of the resort’s carelessness.

Cherry’s mahout said that the elephant had never been violent before. He said that elephants are likely to attack strangers, especially if they are in a bad mood. He warns people never to approach an elephant if its owner is not present. Cherry’s mahout said he too had faced hardship and unemployment because he couldn’t find work for Cherry after the incident.

However, elephants stabbing people to death with their tusks is not such a common occurrence. It did happen in Thailand once in 2015 when a 28 year old man died 24 hours after he was pierced by an elephant’s tusks on a beach in the eastern province of Rayong.

SOURCE: KhaoSod