Three from PRU die in Chiang Mai bus crash

PHUKET: Two students and a teacher from Phuket Rajabhat University (PRU) were killed in a road accident near Chiang Mai on Thursday.

The three were members of a 40-strong party from PRU on an educational trip to northern Thailand. They were on their way back to Phuket at the end of the trip when the accident happened.

The dead students, both women and both aged 23, have been named as Talubpetch Bumrum and Arseuna Tohlae. Both were final-year students at PRU’s Faculty of Science. Police have not yet released the name of the woman lecturer who was killed.

Pol Lt Col Komkrit Kerdkaew, Inspector of Doi Saked Police Station, Chiang Mai, told the Gazette that the dead women were on a bus which crashed at a bend on the Chiang Rai-Chiang Mai road.

The road runs along the edge of a cliff, said Col Kerdkaew, but there was a concrete barrier which had stopped the bus falling into the canyon below.

He said, “Many of the students had climbed out of the windows by the time we got there, but it took two hours to get their possessions off the bus and attend to the injured.”

The bus was being driven by Pravit Samukkeetham, 50, the head driver at PRU, who was also injured in the accident.

Col Kerdkaew said no decision had been taken yet on whether to charge K. Pravit, and that the police planned to question the injured students on Monday about the circumstances surrounding the accident.

He added that the bend was infamous as an accident blackspot.