A man hanged his 11-month-old daughter then himself in Sakoo, south of Phuket International Airport, late yesterday afternoon and made a video broadcast of the hanging of his daughter on Facebook Live in what police believe was an act of jealousy.
The alarm was raised by Jiranuch “Bew” Trirat, 21, who called police at 6:30pm reporting that her boyfriend Wuttisan “Tei” Wongtalay, 20, had posted a Facebook Live video on his page.
The four-minute video, which went viral, showed him tying a rope around their daughter’s neck and lowering the infant over the edge of a building high up, with the sun shining into the camera.
“The video clip, which is about four minutes long, was posted at 5:45pm yesterday,” said Lt. Col. Sanit Nookhong to Thalang Police.
“In the video, Wuttisan showed a bottle of liquid, which we later confirmed was kratom drink. He gives the baby, “Beta,” a drink and has a drink too. After that he ties a rope around the girl’s neck and lowers her down.
“You can hear the girl crying and finally the crying stops. Then he pulls her up onto the rooftop and unties the rope from her neck,” he said.
A photo of Wuttisan and Beta from Wuttisan’s Facebook page
Police launched a search for Wuttisan and baby Beta, and soon found their bodies hanged from the side of a derelict building in Moo 3, Sakoo, near Nai Thon Beach, Lt. Col. Sanit confirmed.
Jiranuch told police that Wuttisan was worried that she was cheating on him. A report in The Nation said that she had recently left him for another man.
That report also included a comment from Facebook’s founder about the use of their live feature to broadcast crimes.
“We have a lot of work, and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening,” Mark Zuckerberg said at a conference last week about the Facebook Live stream of the murder of Robert Godwin Sr. on Easter Sunday.
“At 3am yesterday he checked my phone and threatened to kill me,” she said. Jiranuch did not elaborate on what Wuttisan saw on the phone that prompted the threats.
“I was very afraid and ran away from the house and left Beta with him,” she added.
“I returned home late in the afternoon and they were not there. I called him to bring Beta back to the house, but I could not get in touch with him. That’s when I saw the video clip and called the police,” she said.
Popular Thai Facebook page “Drama Addict” has criticized a Thai TV station today for replaying the clip of the murder on their channel, albeit with the baby’s face blurred.
Story: The Phuket News
