At a press conference yesterday afternoon, the Thai military admitted to keeping the heart, brain, and stomach of a healthy cadet that allegedly died of a sudden heart attack on Oct. 17 while attending the Armed Forces Academies Preparatory School.
The missing organs were never mentioned to the boy’s parents, Pichet and Sukanya Tanyakan, but they were suspicious about his death so they took his body to be examined a second time. That’s when they confronted the school about the missing organs, reported Thai PBS.
Military officials Supreme Command spokesman Lt. Gen. Notthapol Boonngarm, commander of the Armed Forces Academies Preparatory School Maj. Gen. Kanokpong Channuan, and doctors from Army Medical Department and Phramongkutklao Hospital met media yesterday and admitted they had taken the organs — they said they did it to further examine them to determine the cause of death, despite it already having been deemed sudden cardiac arrest.
The parents of Pakapong Tanyakan, 18, doubt the military’s story and call the missing organs further proof that something untoward happened to their son, who they say reported he was being severely disciplined at the school before his death.
Maj. Gen Kanokpong said the family knew about what was being done with the body and that it was standard medical procedure.
Lt. Col. Narut Thongsorn, a doctor at the hospital’s Army Institute of Pathology, said, “His body had no signs of injuries at all so we partially removed some of his organs, like his brain and heart, for detailed examination,” reported The Nation.
However, as we reported yesterday, the boy’s parents said that the autopsy they had done showed that their son had two broken collarbones, a broken rib, and internal bruising at the time of death that could be indicative of being beaten.
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