Bloody robbery at currency exchange

PHUKET TOWN: An employee at the Bank Thai PLC currency exchange booth on Tilok Utit 1 Rd was brutally attacked in a robbery this afternoon. At about 3:15 pm, a foreign customer, wanting to change some money, peered into the window of the booth in front of the Ocean Shopping Mall. She saw the employee, 44-year-old Urai Taweekul, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. “K. Urai was hit several times on the back of her head with a car jack,” said a staff member of the Kusonlatham Foundation, who rushed K. Urai to Bangkok Phuket Hospital where she remains unconscious. “There was blood on her face and all over her shirt,” he said. There was also blood on the counter and on the walls, and the curtains in the booth had been torn down, suggesting that a violent struggle had taken place. No one saw the robbery, but the car jack used by the thief to attack K. Urai was left at the scene. A shopper, who asked not to be identified, told the Gazette that he had seen a man with blood on his shirt running through the Ocean department store. After questioning witnesses, police determined that the thief took a motorbike taxi to Vanich Plaza. Pol Maj Prasert Srikunarak told the Gazette that investigators had established that, on reaching Vanich Plaza, the robber dumped his blood-soaked shirt before taking another motorbike taxi to Soi King Kaew Utit in Baan Kuku. Police are still searching for the suspect. The exchange company has yet to disclose how much money was stolen.