A false sense of security

PHUKET TOWN: This year has not been a good one for 47-year-old security guard Pirat Rungpian, from Nakhon Pathom. After six years of robbing businesses he was supposed to be protecting, his career in crime finally came to a halt after a wheel fell off. Literally. Pirat was arrested in Nakhon Sawan on Friday on a charge of attempted robbery relating to the bungled theft of a safe from the Phuket Grocery on Ong Sim Pai Rd, Phuket Town, on January 2. Pirat had loaded the safe into a wheelbarrow and was on his way out the door when the wheel fell off the barrow. This attracted another guard’s attention, and Pirat ran away, leaving barrow and safe behind. He resurfaced in May, working as a security guard at Ad Mansion on Rat-U-Thit 200 Pi Rd, Patong, but soon disappeared again after stealing cash totaling 20,000 baht from the company. A month later he was at work again, as a security guard at a clothing shop in Soi Kebsab, in Patong. Yet again he fled and disappeared, after the owner returned to the store to find him with his fingers in the till. Investigating Pirat’s history as a security guard, the police discovered that he had a long, if not terribly successful, history of thefts. So seriously did they take Pirat’s dastardly activities that he eventually had no fewer than 12 officers from Region 8 police headquarters in Surat Thani on his trail, including two Lieutenant Generals – Preecha Kleawtanong and Weerachai Timjaroen. During questioning, Pirat confessed to a long list of robberies dating back to June 1995, when he stole radios from Star Inter Trade Co, in Bang Plad, Bangkok. Yes, he was the security guard there too.