A former senior IT executive who made headlines for kicking a police officer in the face after being stopped for drunk driving has denied claims that she also faced a drunk driving charge two years ago.
The 51-year-old woman, identified only as Monsinee, gave her side of the story on Saturday following an incident at an alcohol checkpoint in Suan Luang district of Bangkok earlier this week.
Police manning the checkpoint on a road alongside the motorway in Suan Luang stopped a Mercedes-Benz and tested the driver late Tuesday night. Her blood alcohol level was 104 millgrammes, far above the legal limit of 50.
When officers moved to detain her, she resisted and scolded them using rude language. As they took her to a police vehicle, she suddenly delivered a kick to Pol Lt Col Darathorn Khajornsilp, who was about to close the door of the vehicle. Her foot struck him in the right cheek.
Pol Lt Col Darathorn, deputy superintendent of Traffic Police division 5, was wearing a crash helmet and was not injured but sustained some bruises on his face. The woman was then taken to the Prawet police station.
Ms Monsinee has been charged with driving with a blood alcohol level above the legal limit, resisting arrest and physical assault. She reportedly admitted to only the charge of impaired driving, according to a police source.
Local media reports subsequently quoted police as saying that Ms Monsinee had been charged with drunk driving in August 2022. But on Saturday she insisted that was not true.
In telephone interviews with reporters, she also said she had already held talks with Pol Lt Col Darathorn about the incident on Tuesday. She did not elaborate.
She declined to answer a question about whether she was physically assaulted at the time, saying she would give her statement in court only.
In a video of the incident that has gone viral online, the woman is heard calling the officers “low class”. She said the clip had been edited and that she had said other things as well. But the word she was heard using was probably the strongest she had ever used because she was not a person who used that type of language, she added.
In any case, she insisted she did not rudely scold anyone. She also said she was not drunk at the time.
Pol Lt Col Darathorn said on Saturday that police investigators had not yet taken his statement. He said he would get a medical check-up and bring officers the evidence.
He also insisted that a check of criminal records showed the woman had previously faced a drunk driving charge in August 2022.
On her Facebook page on Friday, the woman maintained that the information about the incident was one-sided. Certain details were “untrue and distorted”, she added.
She said she had not yet given her statement to police and would assign a lawyer to handle the case. The Facebook post was later deleted.
On Friday, Google Thailand issued a statement saying that the woman in the news had resigned from the company in January.
Ms Monsinee said she was now working to develop venture-capital funds to provide seed funding for Thai technology startups.
The woman arrested at a police checkpoint in Suan Luang district was taken to the Prawet police station for questioning afterward. (Photo supplied/Wassayos Ngamkham)