Rapist gets just desserts

PRACHIN BURI: A 24-year-old textile factory worker in Prajantakham District bit the tongue off a 16-year-old boy who tried to rape her. The victim, given the pseudonym “Bee” in a Thai press report, was riding her motorbike home from work at about 10 pm on August 24 when the boy, also on a motorbike, pulled up beside her and asked for directions to a nearby village. Like Little Red Riding Hood, Bee forgot what her mother must have told her about talking to strange men on deserted roads late at night, so she pulled over and told him the way. But after she did so the youth wouldn’t leave. “I’m not sure if I have enough gas to get there. Would you mind shining your light on my gas tank so I can check?” she recalled him as saying. “When I noticed the way he was looking at me, I got scared and tried to ride off – but he stopped me and wrestled me to the ground,” she said. “He began taking off his pants and told me not to scream or resist, otherwise he would shoot me dead.” Then, for some reason, the would-be rapist tried to inject a bit of romance into his assault by French-kissing his victim. This weak attempt at foreplay backfired when Bee bit down hard on his tongue – and, like a Pit Bull, wouldn’t let go. “He hit me and tried to strangle me, but I wouldn’t release the tongue,” she said. Finally, he yanked his head back with all his might – so hard, in fact, that he ripped a chunk of his tongue right off, leaving the end of the offending organ still firmly clenched in the jaws of the feisty Miss Bee. Then he fled on his motorbike. After he was gone, the girl spat out the tongue at the scene of the crime – a quiet road through a copse of bamboo near the back entrance of Nonghuakhoo Temple in Tambon Nong Saen. She then rode home and told her parents, who brought her to the police. Using flashlights, investigators recovered the severed tongue and placed it in a refrigerator to serve as evidence. Then they called nearby hospitals to see if any patient was being treated for a severed tongue. One was – a boy lying in the men’s ward at Chaophrya Apaiphubes Hospital in Muang District, surrounded by concerned relatives. Explaining his injury away, the boy told police in a somewhat garbled voice that he had been set upon by a gang of about 10 hooded thugs, two of whom grabbed him by the throat while another cut his tongue out. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t carrying any valuables!” he told officers. Even with half a tongue, he managed to drop a few names – saying he was a nephew of the Tambon Thatoon Administration Organization President and that he worked as a factory guard for a security company run by a police Senior Sergeant Major. The police didn’t buy his version of events, however, and said they would book him. “We still have the tongue and it’s a strong piece of evidence,” said case investigator Pol Lt Col Nipon Pochoo of the Prajantakham Police of the three-centimeter chunk of flesh.