At least seven people are confirmed dead, including the suspected shooter, after a teen student opened fire at Debsirin Nonthaburi School on Friday morning, in one of Thailand’s deadliest school shootings in recent years.
Casualty figures have fluctuated throughout the day as officials update their counts some outlets have reported as many as eight fatalities, but police and the Ministry of Education have consistently confirmed that both teachers and students are among the dead.
According to Royal Thai Police, the attack did not begin at the school gates. Police say the suspect, a 14-year-old student, first shot and killed his grandparents at their home in the Bang Bua Thong district before making his way to the school armed with what police described as his grandfather’s handgun.
He then opened fire at Debsirin Nonthaburi School in the Bang Kruai district of Nonthaburi province on Friday morning, according to the Bangkok Post.
The shooting began at around 10 a.m. local time at the school, which enrolls roughly 3,000 students about 3,100 students and 147 teachers as of the 2025 academic year, according to district authorities.
Debsirin is a well-established institution with a long history and counts diplomats and former prime ministers among its alumni.
Volunteers from the Poh Teck Tung Foundation received reports of shots fired inside the school at around 10 a.m. One student inside described the gunman as dressed in a purple physical-education uniform, firing dozens of rounds across the school grounds.
Video footage filmed inside a classroom and later verified by several media outlets showed terrified students taking cover under their desks as gunfire echoed nearby.
Parents scrambled for information from abroad and across the city as news of the lockdown spread. One relative of a school employee described getting a panicked call from her son, who was overseas at the time, after he heard through classmates that shots were being fired.
An 18-year-old student who spoke to Reuters said his first instinct was disbelief.
“I didn’t think it was a gun at first,” he said. “There were many shots: bang bang bang. Then it went quiet. Then it started again.”
Emergency crews, including teams from the Poh Teck Tung Foundation, arrived while gunfire was still ongoing. One responder, 47-year-old Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, said his team treated students with wounds to the back, chest, and arms. On an upper floor, they found a male teacher already dead.
In a separate room, they discovered a female teacher with gunshot wounds to the chest and arm; despite roughly 30 minutes of CPR en route to hospital, medics were unable to restore her heartbeat.
Photographs distributed by emergency workers captured the scene outside the school gates: students streaming out under the watch of police, one victim lying on a stretcher beside an ambulance, another being treated by a medic on the ground, and teachers embracing each other in tears.
Royal Thai Police spokesperson Lieutenant General Trairong Piwpan initially told reporters the suspected gunman had died at the scene, apparently by his own hand. That account was later revised. Trairong subsequently said the teenager remained alive and in critical condition, receiving emergency treatment, according to reports.
Most of the casualties are teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17, with the youngest victim just 12 years old, authorities said. More than 20 people are reported wounded in total, with several in critical condition.
Education Minister Prasert Jantararuangtong confirmed both teachers and students were among the dead and said the ministry was mobilizing support for the school community. Deputy Education Minister Akkharanan Kannakittinan said he was coordinating additional assistance for victims and their families.
The attack marks Thailand’s worst mass killing since the 2022 Nong Bua Lamphu massacre, in which 38 people died. It is also the second school shooting in Thailand this year, following an incident in February in the country’s south in which a teacher was killed and a student wounded.
Thailand has one of the higher rates of civilian gun ownership in Southeast Asia, and the country has seen a string of mass-casualty shootings in recent years, including an attack at Bangkok’s Or Tor Kor Market in 2025 that killed five people.
Investigators are still working to establish a motive. As of Friday afternoon local time, the school remained cordoned off as police continued their investigation, and hospitals across Nonthaburi and Bangkok were treating the wounded.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
A 14-year-old student killed his grandparents at home, then opened fire at Debsirin Nonthaburi School on August 7, 2026, leaving at least seven dead, including teachers and students, most of them minors, before he himself was critically wounded.
It marks Thailand’s deadliest attack since 2022 and its second school shooting this year, underscoring a troubling rise in gun violence in a country with comparatively high civilian firearm ownership for the region.
This was not a spontaneous school incident but part of a premeditated, multi-location attack a distinction that matters for understanding both the tragedy and the policy conversation likely to follow.
