Sand-gathering outing ends in horror as 5 family members drown in Mun River
Five family members including three children were found dead in the Mun River in Buri Ram province after suffering a tragic accident while gathering sand on Monday evening.
Wiriya Katchan, 45, along with his daughter Nucharin, 23, his nieces aged 14 and 11 and a nephew aged eight had left their house in Satuk district on Monday morning on a tractor to scoop up river sand for his home improvement project.
Wiriya took along his nieces and nephew as the children loved swimming in the river’s shallows, said Wiriya’s widow, Bang-Orn.
After the group failed to return at noon, she alerted police and a local rescue team to search for them. At 3pm their tractor was located on the riverbank. There was no sign of the five except for the children’s bags and shoes.
Police, volunteers and divers spent over three hours scouring the river before finding the bodies of the family lodged in the sand of the riverbed not far from each other.
Officials speculated that the first victim may have got their leg got stuck in the sand, prompting the others to rush to help, before suffering the same fate.
Rescuers retrieved all five bodies from the river on Monday night for an investigation and funeral rites. The subdistrict administration organisation promised to provide relief to family members of the deceased.
