Police make headway in Burmese murders

PHUKET: Police investigating two separate murders of Burmese workers have finally come across people willing to talk to officers about what they know of the victims. Pol Maj Umpolwat Saenroeng, of Tung Tong Police Station, told the Gazette yesterday that on Wednesday afternoon he received a call from a local resident saying that a body had been found close to the Loch Palm Golf Club. Arriving at the scene, police found the dead man lying face down at the bottom of a 10-meter ditch. Local residents helped officers to retrieve the corpse. The man’s throat had been slit and there was a single deep cut on his upper left arm. There were no other wounds on the body Maj Umpolwat said that after questioning local residents officers discovered that the man, later identified as Nai, 28, was a rubber plantation worker and lived in a labor camp just 500 meters from where his body was found. At the camp, officers questioned Nai’s wife, “Moo”, who told them that two days earlier Nai was drinking with other workers. He had gone out to buy some more alcohol and had not returned. Maj Umpolwat said she told police she believed that Nai was probably killed because he was always “loud” when he was drunk. Meanwhile, at about the same time, Pol Capt Yongyut Krongmalai of Phuket Town Police Station received a call from Wachira Phuket Hospital telling him that a Burmese had died at the hospital of stab wounds. The doctor told officers that the man, called “Ranyor”, had been brought to the hospital by Thai fishermen from the notorious fishing port area, after being stabbed twice in the stomach. The fishermen told the doctor that Ranyor was stabbed while walking out of a grocery store at Saphan Pla. Officers went to the store, where witnesses told them that Ranyor was stabbed by one of a group of about five Burmese who were drinking outside the shop. They said that one of the Burmese simply walked up to Ranyor and stabbed him twice in the stomach. The men then fled. Fishermen who witnessed the stabbing rushed Ranyor to the hospital, where he later died of his injuries. Capt Yongyut said that the police investigation was centering on tracking down the group of Burmese men.