Japanese man arrested for preying on drunk woman in Bangkok
The suspect is arrested at his hotel and faces charges of molesting and trying to kidnap a drunk woman from a bench in RCA
A Japanese man was arrested on Wednesday night for allegedly trying to kidnap a drunk woman at a nightspot in Bangkok’s Royal City Avenue on early Sunday, police said.
Pol Colonel Urumporn Khundejsamrit, chief of Makkasan Police Station, said on Thursday that the suspect, identified as 27-year-old Nishimura (last name withheld), was arrested at his hotel in Sukhumvit area.
He said Nishimura admitted that the molested the Thai woman and then tried to take her to his hotel, but failed. He faces charges of molestation and unlawful detention and has been released on a bail guarantee of 50,000 baht. His bail was posted by his relatives. Police have also seized the suspect’s passport.
The arrest was made after the victim, going by the alias Dear, filed a police complaint on Sunday, saying she had been molested by a Japanese man while she was drunk and helpless.
The victim told police that she left an RCA pub at 4am after drinking with her friends, and called her boyfriend to pick her up from a bench in the carpark.
She said that while she was waiting, a foreigner walked up, introduced himself as Japanese and invited her to go to his hotel room.
When she refused, the man sat next to her and started touching her inappropriately.
The victim said she was too drunk to resist and the man snatched her handbag and mobile phone before pulling her arm to follow him. She said she resisted briefly before passing out due to the alcohol and woke up to find herself in the back of a taxi. Security camera footage obtained by the police shows the man putting her inside a taxi at 4.42am.
The victim said she managed to take her mobile phone back from her kidnapper and called her boyfriend. She said the man appeared to have noticed her boyfriend’s photo on her phone and asked the taxi to return to the same spot where she sat.
CCTV footage showed that the taxi returned to the same spot a minute later and the man carried the woman and deposited her on the bench before walking off.
Dear said that after the man walked away, she called her boyfriend again to pick her up and they both went to file a complaint at the police station.
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