BANGKOK: New York Times correspondent Thomas Fuller was interviewing Major General Khattiya Sawatdiphol, who is allied with anti-government Red Shirt protesters, around 7 p.m. May 13 when the general was shot in the head by an unidentified sniper and critically wounded.
When the shot was fired, Fuller was facing the general about two feet away on a downtown Bangkok street near a subway station. The renegade Thai army officer died four days later while street fighting continued between Red Shirt rebels and government forces. Up to that time, 36 people had been killed in the Bangkok street fighting.
Sawatdiphol was shot after the government warned it would shoot “terrorists” in its latest effort to end the two-month-long siege by thousands of Red Shirts Three correspondents were injured in May during the street clashes: Nelson Rand, a Canadian working for broadcaster France 24; and two Thai journalists with local media, a reporter for the newspaper Matichon and a cameraman with Voice TV.