Police rushed to a seventh-floor classroom at Nakprasit Wittayalai School at 7.30am yesterday to find 18-year-old Supaporn Inthachote with two bullet wounds in her chest and back, Lt-Colonel Chanchai Purathananont of Sam Phran police said.

Near her body were a .38 pistol and a mobile phone while 18-year-old classmate Sopon Impitak stood crying.

Chanchai said that, after Sopon shot the third-year vocational student, he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself with the one bullet left in the cartridge, but it did not go off.

The distressed student then tried to jump out of a window, according to witnesses.

Police arrested Sopon and charged him with premeditated murder and carrying a gun in public.

Sopon and Supaporn were boyfriend and girlfriend for two years but during the New Year holiday she found a new boyfriend, which enraged Sopon and lead to many fights between them.

Three days before the shooting, Sopon slapped Supaporn's face, police said.

Classmate Yont Ketkaew, who was with Sopon before the drama, said his friend had looked sad and, when Supaporn went to the classroom, he followed her and locked the door.

Yont and another friend sat on the balcony until they heard four gunshots, which prompted them to call teachers to unlock the room.

Yont said he looked inside the classroom and saw Sopon trying to jump out a window, then back down, before trying to jump again. A teacher and friends managed to grab him before he was able to get out the window.

Suwannee Khojunsuan, 34, a relative of the dead girl, said Supaporn's father Somchai Inthachote, who works in Mae Hong Son, called her to check what had happened to his daughter.

He had been chatting on the phone to Supaporn when he heard her shouting, followed by the sound of gunshots.

Suwannee and Supaporn's mother Ampai Inthachote, 49, were later informed by the school that Supaporn was dead.

Ampai said that Supaporn was the tidy, youngest daughter of her three children. She only knew that Sopon, who visited her at home sometimes, was one of Supaporn's friends.

Sopon's grandfather Thavee Impitak, 70, said the pistol used in the shooting was his but he had no idea how and when Sopon got access to the gun.

He said Sopon's parents left the boy - who did not talk much - under his care because they had to work at a plastic factory in Nong Ngu Luam.

The Nation

Nakhon Pathom