At least 22 people were injured after a bloody shooting at Debsirin Nonthaburi School on Friday morning that claimed the lives of eight including five teachers. The fire was in Bang Kruai district, Nonthaburi province, causing panic and a huge effort to respond to the situation.

The shooting suspect turned out to be a grade 8 (Mathayom 2) student who was found dead in the renowned co-educational secondary school. His death was caused by “self inflicted injuries,” police say.

A search of the teenager’s house in the Bang Bua Thong district in turn yielded a disturbing finding. The bodies of the suspect’s 73-year-old grandfather and grandmother, who were shot in the head and both died, were discovered. Police think they were strangled before the school shooting, but they are continuing to try to determine exactly when that was.

Emergency Response and Ongoing Investigation

The crisis started about 10am, when emergency volunteers from the Poh Teck Tung Foundation suddenly got a call for gunshots on the campus.

A student witness described the shooter as wearing a red-uvidently a PE uniform- and purple. Crawling up a staircase in the third-floor of the school’s pink building, he barricaded himself in, wearing a 9mm handgun. During the rampage he fired 26 shots and later, 34 rounds of ammunition were found at the scene.

Pattana Promphat, the ministry of Public Health’s public health minister confirmed the eight deaths. Five teachers, the shooter himself and his grandparents were among the victims. The 22 injured persons, all of whom were in serious condition, were hurriedly rushed to the nearby hospitals for immediate medical attention.

The Royal Thai Police officers rushed to the scene and set up a security cordon and evacuation of the remaining students and faculty was carried out safely. The time was immediately spent by forensic teams in examining the crime scene, inspecting the firearm, and interviewing witnesses to return a picture of how the events unfolded.

Authorities highly recommended people stay away from the area and not livestream the incident to not compromise the ongoing investigation.

The brutal attack comes after several other mass casualty incidents in Thailand in recent years, such as a school shooting in Songkhla province in 2024 which killed a school director, and a horrific attack by a former policeman in Nong Bua Lam Phu province in 2022 on a child development centre that resulted in the deaths of five children and several staff members.