Dead beggar still unidentified

PHUKET CITY: Police and local officials are still unsure of the identity of the homeless man found dead outside a lumber yard on Thepkrasattri Rd yesterday morning.

The thin, dark-skinned man was found dead on a bench in front of the Sahamaithai Co Ltd on Thepkrasattri Rd at about 9am.

Phuket Duty Officer Anek Mongkol estimated his age at “over 50”.

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“We always saw him walking around this area, but nobody knows who he was. Some have suggested he may have been Burmese,” one staff member at the lumber yard told the Gazette.

The Gazette has been able to confirm that the beggar was not the itinerant man known locally as Pha Khao Maa Daeng, so named because he always wears a red loincloth – and nothing else – while walking the streets of Samkong.

Temple monks at the nearby Wat Pa Aram Rattanaram were unable to provide the Gazette with any clues as to the man’s identify.

“He was always begging for food from the temple and after he got it he would disappear for a while before returning. But we don’t know his name or where he was from,” one of the monks there said.

Staff at the Vachira Phuket Hospital, where the body is being kept, said no relatives had yet arrived to claim the man’s remains.

As is standard procedure, the body will be held for two weeks before it is turned over to the Kusoldharm Foundation for burial at their cemetery in Mai Khao, a staff member said.