A British teacher being sought by police in Myanmar after a fellow expat was found dead in his flat after a night out drinking is believed to have fled the country.
Harris Binotti, 25, is wanted by police in Yangon, the country’s former capital, on suspicion of carrying out an attack on Gary Ferguson, 47, also from Britain, with whom he had been drinking on Friday night.
Ferguson was discovered with wounds to the chest and neck on Sunday morning, after calls to his mobile phone by his wife went unanswered, according to a police statement.
Myanmar’s ministry of information said Binotti had left the country on Sunday, but gave no further details on his whereabouts. “The defendant of the case left from Yangon international airport by Thai Airways on the evening of 5 November,” it said.
The case was opened at Kyauktada township police station, in the heart of Yangon, the commercial capital, near the Sule Pagoda.
According to the police statement, Binotti and Ferguson, who both work for Horizon international school, spent Friday night partying at the Uptown hotel in Yangon before returning to Binotti’s home.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, neighbours in three nearby apartments said they heard two men and a woman arguing between midnight and 4.30am on Saturday.
“At that time we were sleeping, someone was smashing the walls, smashing the floors,” one said. “At around 4.30am we didn’t hear anything.”
A neighbour said: “It sounded like fighting, something like that. Then silence.”
They said Binotti and his girlfriend, named by police as fellow teacher Elsie Devolder, had rented the apartment for several months, mostly leaving for work in the early morning and returning late at night.
“I can’t speak English and they can’t speak Burmese so we didn’t speak too much, just if they went out somewhere they said ‘bye’,” said one neighbour.
Devolder’s Facebook page was active early on Monday but is not accessible now. Over the weekend her profile photo was changed to a black square. Police identified the victim’s wife as Supatchaya Sichompor. She declined to comment when contacted by phone on Monday.
The police account is based on interviews with the two women, who told authorities that they discovered the body together on Sunday morning after several phone calls to the victim went unanswered.
Police have not detained anyone and a woman believed to be Devolder was seen leaving the apartment on Monday afternoon when she was confronted by journalists waiting outside.
“Why did it take you so long to report the body?” the BBC’s Jonah Fisher asked the woman as she shielded her face with a scarf and hurried to a waiting car.
Horizon’s director of studies told Agence France-Presse the school had heard that Ferguson died after he suffered a “hard blow to his chest and his head”. Ferguson had worked there for a year while Binotti had been there for about three months, a school spokesman was quoted as saying by the Press Association.
The spokesman said: “We don’t know exactly what happened. They were together and they had been drinking and enjoying the night and after that he was found dead on Sunday morning. They were friends but they had been drinking. He [Mr Binotti] is now missing and there is an investigation.
“We send our condolences to Mr Ferguson’s family.”
The Foreign Office said it was providing help and support to the family and was in touch with local authorities.
Myanmar has experienced an increase in the number of foreigners working in the country since it started opening up to the outside world in 2011 after decades of military rule. A handful of international schools have also opened up in that time, creating opportunities for English-language teachers.
A Facebook page for Binotti shows that he had a number of different jobs before taking up a post as an English teacher in Yangon. These ranged from being a holiday representative, a ski representative and an assistant hotel duty manager.
