Standout coverage of mass shooting at rural Thailand day care center
Parents of a child killed three days earlier in a mass shooting at a day care center grieve as personnel change the child’s clothes in a coffin at Wat Rat Samakee temple in the rural town of Uthai Sawan, northeastern Thailand, Oct. 9, 2022. A former police officer burst into a day care center Oct. 6, killing dozens of people — preschoolers and teachers — before shooting more people as he fled. (AP Photo / Wason Wanichakorn)
By Grant Peck, Elaine Kurtenbach, Wason Wanichakorn, Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukul, Kaweewit Kaewjinda, Sakchai Lalitkanjanakul, Wally Santana, Jerry Harmer, Kristen Gelineau, Tong-hyung Kim, David Rising, Wang Penny, Tassanee Vejpongsa, Kiko Rosario and Tian Ji
AP’s Bangkok-based journalists, coordinating with a cast of colleagues from Southeast Asia to Australia to London, delivered unmatched agency coverage, impressive for its speed and scope after Thailand’s deadliest mass shooting — 36 people dead at a day care center,most of them children. The ex-police officer responsible also killed his wife and child, and then killed himself.
As an all formats team headed by air to Uthai Sawan,a small village in one of the country’s poorest and most remote areas,AP was quick to secure user-generated content from sources there,sending out nearly a dozen videos the first day,in addition to text updates and photos. Coverage continued with the arrival of staffers and freelancers on the ground,and included live video, stories of the town in mourning, the lone child to survive the shooting unscathed,and the wrenching, sensitively told story of a family that lost a 4-year-old daughter.