Police in Pailin province on Saturday arrested a man for killing his sister-in-law, her husband and their baby girl on Friday before torching their home with the bodies inside, a police official said Sunday.
During questioning by provincial police on Saturday, Chhaom Chamnan, 32, confessed to the murders, which he said he carried out in retaliation for the couple’s refusal to lend him 1,000 Thai baht (about $30), said Meas Sophon, chief of the provincial police’s minor crimes bureau.
But Mr. Sophon claimed the suspect’s admission came only after he attempted to flee during questioning, prompting an officer to fire a warning shot into the ground.
Shaken, and with a piece of shrapnel thrown up by the round lodged in his leg, Mr. Chamnan told police everything, he said.
“The suspect took revenge on the victims…after he was refused the money.”
Mr. Sophon said Mr. Chamnan lured Heng Ravy, a commune clerk, from his home under the pretext that a cobra was eating one of his chickens.
Mr. Chamnan then strangled him with an electrical wire before clubbing his wife, Thy Phallay—the suspect’s sister-in-law—to death and suffocating the baby, he said.
