Six American soldiers, who local media reported were attending the multinational Cobra Gold military exercise in Thailand, were fined for fighting with two Thai men outside a bar in Pattaya on Saturday afternoon.
This one-minute clip, which has over half a million views, shows a foreigner and two Thai men shoving each other while others try to separate them. It was reported that the Thai men persistently tried to sell counterfeit watches to the soldiers who were drinking at a bar, but they weren’t interested. For unknown reasons, a fight broke out between them and they took it out in the street.
Officers quickly intervened as the incident happened near the Pattaya police station.
Pol. Lt. Pathompong Kanpisut told Coconuts that the Thai men threw the first punch.
“From the CCTV, the Thais started the fight first, so we charged all eight of them [six foreigners and two Thais] for the brawl. Both sides confessed,” he said.
The Thai men were fined THB5,000 each because they started the fight, while the soldiers had to pay THB1,000 each. All of them were released.
Although local media reported that the alleged watch sellers were aggressively trying to make a sale, Pol. Lt. Pathompong said that he didn’t know anything about counterfeit watches. He also didn’t know the motive behind the bar fight.
He only said, “The foreigners were fine. They were soldiers so they were young and very large, but the Thais — one of them was bleeding from his month.”
