Austrian Murdered

[sriracha john]

PHITSANULOK

Published on Apr 17 , 2005

An Austrian man was stabbed to death Saturday night in Bang Rakam district, possibly by his Thai drinking pals, police said.

At 8.30pm at the entrance to Ban Raingkadok village police found the body of a white foreigner with stab wounds to his neck and face. The dead man was lying next to a motorbike, said Lt-Colonel Jaran Boonmee of the Bang Rakam police station. Pieces of a broken beer bottle lay scattered around the scene, he added.

A local woman, Tawanron Huayhongthong, 44, later identified the dead man as her Austrian husband, 40-year-old Andreas Latner. She told police that she, Latner and her daughter were on a visit to a relative in Ban Raingkadok for Songkran when Latner left the house.

Later he was found dead. Tawanron said she had no idea why anyone would want to kill her husband.

Witnesses said Latner stopped by for a drink with a group of villagers at a house some 50 metres from where his body was later found, deputy inspector Lt-Col Daenchai Ngamsong said.

Police suspect that the Austrian man might have become embroiled in an argument with some of the drunken locals who chased and stabbed him to death with a broken beer bottle.