Former deputy national police chief Pol Gen Salang Bunnag died on Sunday after falling from the 7th floor of a shopping centre. He was 81.
Pak Kret police said a man had plunged from the seventh to the first floor at a shopping centre on Chaengwattana Road on Sunday.
Pol Capt Thanawat Cheewitsophon, an officer on duty of Pak Kret police station, told INN news that police found several handwritten notes signed by Pol Gen Salang Bunnag near the body.
Pol Capt Thanawat said the former officer died before his body was sent to Chonprathan Hospital.
Police have not concluded whether he had committed suicide or suffered a fatal accident. But a video clip on social media showed him intentionally letting himself drop.
The letter said he had less than two years to live and urged the public to oppose plans to build double-track railway lines and elevated trains, but support construction of "autobahn" express highways.
Wassan Kradtung, who witnessed the incident, said she saw the man walking on the seventh floor before he suddenly climbed over the glass barrier and plunged to the ground floor, according to a police report.
Pol Gen Salang had a history of taking dramatic actions. In 1996, he led the team to arrest narcotics kingpin Joe Danchang and five other drug suspects in Suphan Buri, which ended with the controversial extrajudicial killing of all six.
He also led anti-riot police in a bloody crackdown on students at Thammasat University on Oct 6, 1976, when he was a police lieutenant colonel.