Andrew Drummond

 John Denver karaoke sparks Thai killing spree - Sunday Telegraph

From Andrew Drummond,
Bangkok
A gunman in Thailand who shot-dead eight neighbours, including his brother-in-law, said yesterday he had had enough of the noise and their awful karaoke singing.

Weenus Chumkamnerd, 52, put his gun to the head of a respected female doctor and seven of her guests as they partied at her home in Songkhla Province, South Thailand.

“When I began shooting nobody pleaded for his life because they were all drunk,” he said after his arrest.

Weenus said he was so furious himself that he did not notice he had murdered his brother-in-law.

“I warned these people about their noisy karaoke parties. I said if they carried on I would go down and shoot them.  I had told them if I couldn’t talk sense into them I would come back and finish them off,”  he added.

Weenus, a rubber tapper, was arrested yesterday after going on the run after his killing spree on Sunday last week in the townn of  Hat Yai, near the Malaysian border.

The doctor who was hosting the party, Dr. Suthathip Thammachart, 36, a director of a local hospital who was due this month to get an awards for her services to medicine.

Weenus short her husband, Trirat, first and she was the last person to be shot. Her husband who would have been the nineth fatality survived after playing dead convincing Weenus that he too had been killed.  He later recovered in hospital.

When he realised he had shot his brother-in-law, named Boontip Desaro,  Weenus said he was filled with remorse.  He got his son to take Boontip to hospital, but he was already dead.

A neighbour said that the karaoke group normaly sang Thai pop and southern Thai ballads, but one particular western tune could be heard often  - John Denver’s ‘Country Roads’.