Man murdered while guarding beans

CHERNG TALAY: Somphong Keawpitak, 32, a boat tour guide working at Banyan Tree Phuket, was shot dead yesterday in a small hut in a Cherng Talay hillside while guarding bunches of freshly picked “sator” – the spicy beans that are a specialty of the South. Pol Maj Winai Kongkeaw, Inspector of Cherng Talay Police Station, told the Gazette that a villager called at 7:30 in the morning to report that a man had been murdered in a rubber tree plantation on Khao Nai’dee. Arriving at the scene, investigating officers found K. Somphong dead, still dressed in his Banyan Tree uniform. He had been shot once with a .38 pistol in the left side of the chest. Police believe that he had been killed at least eight hours earlier. Kusornlatham Foundation volunteers took his body to Thalang hospital for autopsy. While questioning K. Somphong’s relatives, officers discovered that he went to guard his sator because his daily harvest was being stolen every day. Relatives told police that they believe K. Somphong was shot by someone he knew, and not by the sator thief. Maj Winai told the Gazette, “I will try to find and arrest the gunman soon.”