A police officer was killed when the driver of a pickup truck, carrying a group of illegal migrant workers from Myanmar, refused to stop at a roadblock and crashed into a parked police car in Mueang district of Kamphaeng Phet province late Tuesday night.
Another pickup truck, also carrying illegal migrants, failed to stop and drove over spikes laid by the police to puncture the tyres. The vehicle still managed to escape though.
Police said that the dead officer, Pol Cpl Natthawat, was standing behind the parked police car while his colleagues used torches to signal the two trucks to slow down and pull over, before one driver rammed his truck into the police car.
The impact crushed Natthawat against a utility pole. The driver, identified as ‘Songphol’, abandoned his vehicle and ran into sugarcane plantation, but was captured shortly afterward.
While hiding among the sugarcane, Songphol reportedly phoned his brother in the other truck to come to pick him up. His brother and another Thai were also arrested, along with 19 illegal migrant workers.
The two drivers claimed that they were each paid 8,000 baht to transport the 19 migrants from Wang Chao district in Tak to a broker in Uthai Thani province.
