Thai Police Hunt for Killer of Young Girl after her Body Found in Canal South of Bangkok

 

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BANGKOK – Police are searching for a murderer after the body of a young girl aged between 11 and 13 was found in Samut Prakan’s Samrong canal on Sunday.

Police General Hospital’s Institute of Forensic Medicine reported that the young girl had died of suffocation three days prior to the body being discovered, a police source revealed on Monday.

The 150-centimetre-tall victim sustained blunt force trauma to the head and had bruising on the right inner thigh and on the back of both hands as well as cuts on both thighs, possibly as a result of the body being hit by boat propellers, the source said.

Investigators had the medical examiner collect the victim’s fingerprints to check them against fingerprints contained in the Provincial Administration Department’s database.

Deputy police spokesman Maj-General Songpol Wattanachai said that Bang Saothong precinct police investigators were gathering evidences to identify the victim, he said the autopsy results, expected in 10 days, would determine if the girl had been raped.

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Meanwhile, Police and soldiers raided a Bang Saothong shoe factory and workers’ dormitory on Soi Mummai on Tuesday morning, rounding up the 22 workers for testing.

There was no immediate word of a suspect being identified.

The factory, which is in the area where the girl’s body was discovered in Samrong Canal, was targeted after the owner acknowledged ordering rice from a Roi Et mill whose brand name appeared on a sack holding rocks and concrete blocks that had been attached to the victim’s body to submerge it.

The rice mill went out of business around five years ago and its sacks were resold for other purposes, including to carry construction material.

Police also found traces of a bonfire and the same kind of rope used to bind the girl’s body at an abandoned roadside pavilion near the factory and dormitory.

The girl’s fingerprints didn’t find any match in a search of the Provincial Administration Department’s database.

Police have asked the Mirror Foundation’s Missing Persons Centre to check its database for anyone matching the victim’s description and the Immigration Police Bureau to see if it has any record of a foreign visitor who might be a match.