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A WOMAN and her 20-year-old daughter died in a hail of bullets as a gang peppered their vehicle with bullets in a massacre last night. The woman's 15-year-old daughter, also in the car, was fighting for her life in hospital this morning.
Police are hunting for a gang of at least four men that they believe was responsible for the Loy Kratong eve slaughter of the woman and her daughter near their home, close to Phuket's famous Heroine's Monument in central Phuket.
Stunned expat and Thai neighbors in the estate on the road to Pa Klok gathered around the family's bullet-riddled white Mazda last night as Phuket police pieced together the circumstances behind one of the most shocking assassination-murders Phuket has seen.
Police believe property broker Jreerati Narkmee, 41, was being driven home from dinner in Phuket City by daughter Kiriyaporn Anutathato, 20, with Ananthira Anutathato, 15, in the back seat when the men struck about 10pm.
At least four guns were fired, police said. The car was shot at from the rear, neighbors told officers, as the women neared their home. Then, cut off by a pickup, more shots were fired from the front. One German neighbor said he witnessed it all.
Police believe the massacre followed a warning delivered by unhappy customers of Khun Jreerati just two months ago. At the time, three young men came to the house and demanded 10 million baht be returned, or the family would be killed.
The men beat up the property and real estate sales broker and her daughter, officers said, and also laid into the family's two cars.
At the time, Khun Jreerati's husband decided he'd had enough and had not been seen at the family's home since, police said.
Three nights ago, two men in full face masks rode around the estate where the family lives, and they returned over successive nights to warn Khun Jreerati.
At least four homemade guns of a type known as thai pradit were fired last night. The guns fire nine bullets at once when the trigger is pulled.
Khun Jreerati was shot at least five times in the back and her younger daughter, in a serious condition in Thalang Hospital today, was hit at least three times. Twenty-year-old Kiriyaporn was shot several times in the head.
Thalang police said many land title documents were found in the car. The estate where the women lived did not have security cameras or guards, officers said.
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According to police report, Khun Jreerati got since two months strong warnings to refund unsatisfied customers or get in deep trouble.
Perhaps negligence by police to listen to Khun Jreerati's customer complaints has push those people to get justice by themselves.
Greedy businessmen and business women know how to get protection from local administrations and police and most of time complaints go to deaf ears.
Murders, police station blockades are the signals of public frustration of the poor performance of police duty to protect the weak against the villains.
Posted by Whistle-Blower on November 21, 2010 08:51