British Boy,8, Held With Sharpened Pencil In Bangkok

Andrew Drummond | Oct 29, 2009

An eight-yr-old British boy was held with a sharpened pencil to his throat held by an apparently drug crazed thief on the outskirts of the Thai capital Bangkok, his father said today.
Screaming and shouting in Thai, the thief, in his twenties, demanded cash after being confronted by the boy’s mother and Liverpudlian dad.

The boy’s father Ron Raine

The boy’s father Ron Raine

‘I told him he would die if he did anything to my son,’ said the boy’s father Ron Raine, 57, ‘but I was three yards away and too far away to make a lunge at him and stop him piercing my son’s throat.
‘There was a lot of screaming and shouting.’
Amazingly the stand-off came to an end after Ron Raine, a graphics designer from Walton, Liverpool, produced the sum total of the only cash in his and his wife Fon’s wallet totaling just over eight pounds (sterling).
The thief then left, hurriedly letting go of Martin, a keen Everton supporter, and leaving not only his shoes behind but also a bag containing a knife and tools for burglary.
The incident happened in Krissada Nakorn village in Rangsit, 25 miles north of Bangkok on Tuesday evening. A police spokesman in Rangsit said: ‘We are confident we will catch the man as we can build up a picture of him quickly because he left his belongings behind.’
Ron Raine,  said he believed that the thief had got into his house during the day and was trapped inside when he got back from visiting friends, and his wife and son got back from the shops with Martin.
‘I heard my son screaming and rushed inside to see the man holding my son with his arm round Martin’s neck and a pencil to his throat. It was a pencil Martin was using for his homework.
‘The thief agreed to go after we produced all the cash we had on us, less than eight quid, and I promised I would not follow.   I had to stop my wife chasing after him.  I did not know what he might have done and decided to leave it to the police.
‘ I was brought up in Walton within spitting distance of Goodison Park and later spent 15 years in Kirkby. This is a quiet suburb and has upset us all.  Martin says he wants us to move house.’