SONGKHLA: Offers of assistance are pouring in for a deliveryman who claims he was sacked for making late deliveries after he had stopped to help a teenage rape victim, but his employer tells a different story.
People have been phoning in and arriving at Hat Yai police station to offer Thipakorn Thongkhao, 30, cash, new jobs and new phones. Donors included actress and activist Panadda Wongphudee, who offered 10,000 baht.
The flood of assistance followed reports quoting him saying he was fired after making late deliveries of drinking water on Sunday because police investigating an attempted rape the previous day, in which he had helped the victim, had called him in for questioning.
Speaking by phone on condition of anonymity, Mr Thipakorn's employer said he and his wife had praised him for helping the girl. His dismissal from the job had nothing to do with the case.
According to the employer, Mr Thipakorn on Sunday asked for permission to drive a new vehicle to deliver drinking water to 50 customers who had not received their orders on Saturday, because Mr Thipakorn had stopped to help the girl.
Deliveries started at 2pm on Sunday after his return from questioning at Hat Yai police station in the morning. The task should have taken about an hour, but Mr Thipakorn did not return the vehicle until about 11pm.
He had used the company's vehicle for his own purposes. The employer's wife fired him because she could not use the vehicle to help her daughter and her friends take their belongings to the dormitory they were moving into, as they had planned.
Mr Thipakorn said earlier that he and some workers from Myanmar saved a 15-year-old girl whose grandfather was trying to rape her in a forest near a construction site in tambon Khuan Lang of Hat Yai district on Saturday.
He said he was delivering drinking water to the site and heard the girl screaming for help.
On Sunday, he finished making the deliveries about 6pm, and then stopped off to tell relatives about the rescue the previous day.
He claimed he returned the vehicle to his employer about 9pm.
Reports said the girl's 68-year-old grandfather was drunk when he was caught and held by the men who arrived to help the distressed girl. By then she was naked to the waist.
The girl said her grandparents had raised her after her parents divorced. On Saturday she had asked her grandfather to take her to visit her mother. Instead, he took her into the forest.
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