Seven-year-old drowns in Phuket pool
RASSADA, PHUKET: An unsupervised seven-year-old boy drowned in a swimming pool at the Top Land housing estate on Saturday.
Police were alerted to the incident about 2pm by residents of the estate, located near the Tungka elementary school in tambon Rassada.
They rushed to the scene with emergency workers and found the boy, identified as Prawit Manapreecha-ngamlert, a student at Ketho School, in critical condition.
Residents had already removed him from the pool.
Investigators were told that the pool was under repair and that workers had filled it with water “to find out whether there were cracks or it was leaking.”
Prawit was taken to nearby Vachira Phuket Hospital in critical condition, but doctors there could not pull him through, and he died.
The boy lived with his mother, a golf caddy, and grandmother, a junk dealer, in their Rassada Village 5 home. Before the incident, he had gone out to play with two of his friends.
“The pool is blocked off,” said Mrs Wanida Singtong, who was working nearby, “but the drowned boy and his friends went round the back and sneaked in.”
“The two other boys went for help after he got in trouble, but he was already floating on the surface of the pool by the time anyone could get to him,” she said.
Top Land management reportedly scheduled a rite with Buddhist monks for Monday morning at 9am.
Such rites are held to appease the spirits of those who die under violent or unexpected circumstances.
— Khunakorn Terdkiatkhachorn
