Editor’s Note: This story was updated on July 18, 2017, after Coconuts received further information about the car accident.
An English teacher and longtime resident of the northern city of Chiang Rai died in the early hours of June 21.
UK paper Metro reported that Irishman John Malone, 39, was pulled pantless from the backseat of the wreck along with a naked Thai woman, who was not named, at about 1am.
The teacher, who was employed by The Learning Academy, was still alive when freed from the car but died later at the hospital, according to Chiang Rai Times.
However, a police statement and video-taped interview with members of the first-responder rescue team on the scene of the accident cast serious doubt on early media reports about the circumstances surrounding the crash.
According to both the statement and witness interviews in the video, early media reports—including a quote from someone identified as a rescue volunteer—that victim John Malone, 39, and a female passenger were in a state of undress are untrue.
“Regarding the media reports that the foreigner had sex in the car, I’d like to confirm that Mr. John had his pants on at the scene,” said Peeradech Suwansak, who identified himself as a head of Chaing Rai’s Siam Ruam Jai volunteers, in a video posted on June 28.
“We checked for injuries on his body and we found that his left leg was broken…We had to cut his pants in order to splint Mr. John’s leg,” he said.
The police statement, dated June 29, backs up that version of events, stating that “There was no such incident” and suggested that “a leaked photo of pantsless Malone taken while he was being carried into the ambulance led to false media reports.”
Many pictures of the scene originally uploaded appear to have been removed, though one picture—initially uploaded blurred—seen by Coconuts today suggests that the female passenger may have been clothed and simply wearing a very skimpy outfit.
In light of this new information and at the request of the family, Coconuts has updated the story.
