CHON BURI – A man escaped death when he was thrown off a bridge with a rope around his neck by a gang of men purportedly acting on the order of his boss, reports said.
Police said they received reports on Sunday that a man had been thrown off a bridge near the Chon Buri-Rayong bypass.
At the scene, police found a broken nylon rope tied to a ledge of the bridge.
Witnesses told police that a group of men threw another man off the bridge with the rope tied around his neck. However, the rope broke and the victim fell onto the road.
He was able to dodge several trucks and speeding cars during and after his fall and crawled away into nearby woods, according to witnesses.
Police said the man came out of hiding when he realised that police were searching for him.
He was identified as Prasarth Sattabutr, 29. He had a broken leg and several other injuries when police found him.
He told police that he was kidnapped on Saturday while working at a construction site in Sahaphat Industrial Estate.
The Surin native said four men grabbed him and tied him with chains and dragged him onto the back of a truck. He was taken to a house where he was brutally beaten. The victim said one of his attackers said that he was unlucky to have to suffered the "boss’s anger".
Mr Prasarth told police he was tied up again later and taken to the bridge, where the men tied a rope around his neck.
The victim said one of his captors told him that the "boss" wanted them to drown him and they asked him where he would like to die. They gave him two choices, Bang Pakong River or Bang Phra River Basin, he told police. He chose the latter.
When they arrived at the Bang Phra River Basin they found the water level was too low so they put him back on the truck to find another suitable spot for his murder.
He overheard one of his captors saying that they could run into police and they should get rid of him as soon as possible, and suggesting that they hang him from the bridge.
“Even if the rope breaks, he will be crushed by the cars on the road, let’s do it here,” one of the men said, according to the victim's statement.
The victim said he was lucky that the rope wasn’t strong enough to carry his weight, and it broke. He fell to the road and he quickly rolled towards the trees to seek cover.
"When they saw that I had survived they came down to look for me, so I had to hide," the victim said.
He said he heard a lot of commotion and a group of people in the community nearby came out of their homes. That's when he realised that his would-be killers had fled.
Mr Prasarth said he suspected that his former employer was behind the murder attempt. He said he was working as a truck driver and had to quit his last job after he delivered a container to the wrong location.
He said his former employer was very temperamental and had threatened him, even after they were able to track down the container along with all the items contained inside it.
"He accused me of theft and demanded I give him the names of the people who were involved in the theft. When I insisted that I was innocent, he pressured me so I had to quit.”
Police said they would question his former employer.