SURAT THANI: A drug trafficker shot a policeman, drove a car over him and fled to safety as a sting operation went horribly wrong in Ban Ta Khun district on Thursday night.
The policeman died on the spot.
The violence happened in Ban Pak Suad village of tambon Phrasaeng about 9pm when a team of plainclothes police were taking delivery of illicit drugs from one of two suspected traffickers who had arrived in a silver Honda City sedan.
As police moved in to arrest them, the driver in the car fired at the officers. Pol Sen Sgt Maj Poonkrit Buakaeo, a 46 year-old native of Nakhon Si Thammarat province, was hit and fell to the ground.
The gunman, alleged to be Surachet Wanluea, 24, from Phrasaeng district of Surat Thani, then drove the car over the fallen policeman before fleeing the scene with his accomplice.
On Friday morning the car was found abandoned along a roadside in Phanom district, about three kilometres from the crime scene.
The hunt for the two men continues.
