Thai police arrest gunman for killing ex-wife at shopping mall

Bangkok (Reuters) – A man killed his ex-wife and wounded another person at a shopping centre in Bangkok on Tuesday, police said, just 10 days after a mass shooting at another mall in Thailand’s northeast.

The man had gone into a beauty clinic at Century The Movie Plaza mall where his ex-wife worked and opened fire, killing her and wounding a bystander, Colonel Kissana Pattanacharoen said.

The gunman was arrested while on the run in another province, police said on Wednesday morning.

He was charged with premeditated murder and illegal gun possession, and three other charges.

The shooting came with Thailand on edge after the shooting rampage earlier in the month.

On Feb. 8 and 9, a soldier killed at least a dozen people at the Terminal 21 shopping centre in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima. He had earlier killed his commanding officer, other soldiers at his base and several people at a Buddhist temple.

Gun ownership is relatively common in Thailand, with about 10 million privately owned firearms in the country in 2016, according to Gunpolicy.org, or one for about every seven citizens.

Gun violence killed 1,729 people in 2016, about 10 times the rate per 100,000 as in neighbouring Malaysia, the organisation said.

Most violence involving firearms stem from personal disputes or robberies. Mass shootings or killings in public spaces are rare other than in the far south, where a decades-old insurgency persists.