Thai teen kills 8 in rampage at home and school before shooting himself

A 14-year-old student killed at least six people and himself in a Thailand school shooting on Friday, after fatally shooting his grandparents at their home outside Bangkok, police said.

It is the country's worst mass killing since 2022.

What happened in the Thailand school shooting?

Police said the suspect, a 14-year-old student, first shot his grandparents at their home before travelling to Debsirin Nonthaburi School, where he opened fire on students and teachers. He fired at least 26 rounds and was carrying 34 more rounds before shooting himself in the head.

What did witnesses describe at the scene?

Students streamed out of Debsirin Nonthaburi School, on the capital's northwestern outskirts, as the wounded were loaded onto ambulances. Teachers hugged each other and cried as emergency workers moved through the campus. Photos circulated by emergency workers showed one person lying on a stretcher outside an ambulance while a medic attended to another victim.

One 18-year-old student told Reuters he initially thought firecrackers were going off or someone was banging an object. "I didn't think it was a gun at first," he said. "There were many shots: bang bang bang. Then it went quiet. Then it started again."

Emergency worker Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, 47, said he arrived while the shooting was still ongoing and his team treated students with injuries to their backs, chests and arms. His team found a male teacher dead on an upper floor and a female teacher with chest and arm wounds in another room. He was then called to treat the shooter after hearing a final shot.

"We rushed up and found that the perpetrator had shot himself in the right side of the head and collapsed," Kiatikhun said. "When we got up there, we checked his pulse, he still had one, so we started CPR." The suspect was taken to hospital afterward, he said.

How many people were killed and injured?

Lieutenant General Trairong Phophan, a spokesman for the National Police, told Reuters the suspected shooter was among seven people killed at the school, with 15 others injured. Education Minister Prasert Jantararuangtong said both teachers and students were among the casualties, and police identified the perpetrator as a student.

The school had around 3,100 students and 147 teachers enrolled in the 2025 academic year, according to district authorities. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul called the attack a terrible tragedy. "I'm sad for those who died and sad for something like this to happen in our country," he told reporters.

Has Thailand had school shootings before?

Friday's attack is the second school shooting in Thailand this year, after a teacher died and a student was injured in the country's south in February. Gun ownership and gun violence are not uncommon in Thailand, which has recorded a series of deadly shootings over the past six years, with children repeatedly among the victims.

Thailand's worst mass killing by a single perpetrator took place in 2022, when a former policeman killed 36 people, including 22 children stabbed as they slept at a daycare centre, in a three-hour gun-and-knife attack in the northeast. A gunman killed five people, including security guards and a vendor, at a Bangkok market in July 2025 before turning the gun on himself.

In 2020, a soldier killed 29 people in a shooting rampage in Nakhon Ratchasima. In 2023, a 14-year-old used a modified handgun to kill two people and wound five others at a luxury Bangkok shopping centre.

What are Thailand's gun laws?

After the 2023 shopping centre shooting, Anutin, then serving as interior minister, ordered a raft of gun control measures. These included a short-term ban on new licenses, import restrictions and a ban on people under 20 from shooting ranges.

Longer-term measures also included a medical certificate assessing the mental health and psychological condition of gun owners, along with a set validity period for some gun licenses. Thailand had an estimated 10.3 million firearms in civilian possession, equating to around 15 guns per 100 residents, the highest rate in Southeast Asia by a wide margin, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey.