TRANG — Police are hunting down a 20-year-old man who allegedly drugged and raped his eight-year-old neighbour, who died later.
Pol Maj Charnnarong Klonsom, investigation chief at Ban Nong Trud police station in Muang district, said on Thursday that the girl's mother filed a complaint that her daughter had allegedly been raped by her neighbour.
The girl, whose name was withheld, was sent to Trang Hospital after becoming delirious and confused. She died shortly later.
Police investigators have already obtained identification of the girl's neighbour and stepped up a manhunt for his arrest, said Pol Maj Charnnarong.
The 31-year-old mother of the girl went to Trang Hospital to receive the girl's body on Thursday. She told a reporter tearfully that the incident took place at her house in the early hours of Tuesday.
During the time, she and her husband were working at a rubber plantation, leaving their children alone. Their son, 11, slept in his own room while the girl and her sister, 4, slept together.
The suspect allegedly entered her daughters' room and raped the girl, said the woman, whose name was also withheld.
When she returned home at around 6am on May 10, she found the girl suffering an acute stomach ache and developing signs of confusion and deliriousness.
She initially assumed that her daughter might have been affected by black magic so she took her to see a local fortune-teller, but her condition did not improve.
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She decided to take her daughter to Trang Hospital, where the girl had a gastric lavage.
Doctors found traces of rape on her, said the woman, adding she had not been aware of the sexual assault until then. She then asked her daughter, who regained consciousness at the time what happened to her.
The girl told her that Mr First, their 20-year-old neighbour, came to her house on Monday afternoon and gave her a soft drink. Mr First was close to her family as he was a friend of her husband and his house was only 500 metres way, said the woman.
When she and her husband left for the rubber plantation at around 2am on May 10, the girl told her someone broke into their room and punched her stomach. She could not resist when the man did something violent on her as she suffered a severe stomach pain.
However, the mother said her daughter recognised the attacker, who fled when her youngest daughter woke up and also saw him.
The woman said doctors told her that they found traces of methamphetamine in the soft drink her daughter had taken. The girl later died at the hospital's intensive care unit.
The family on Thursday sent her body to Songklanagarind Hospital for an autopsy to find the exact cause of death.