BANGKOK – At least seven people were injured Friday (July 22) when a driver had a seizure and her car ploughed into a Hindu shrine in Bangkok hit by a fatal bomb last year, police said.
The light blue sedan veered off a major road in the heart of the capital at about 8:20pm and slammed through a gate onto the grounds of Erawan Shrine, the site of a bombing in August 2015 that left 20 dead and scores injured.
“It was an accident,” Lumpini police commander Pornchai Chalodet told AFP of the car crash.
“A lady had epilepsy while driving and couldn’t control the car which went into Erawan Shrine. Four people were injured,” he said.
The shrine, a popular stop for East Asian tourists, was thronged with worshippers at the time of the accident, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
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“We were praying and then suddenly we heard a big noise and we saw a car coming inside. We ran like crazy. It was very scary. At I first thought it was a car bomb but everyone was very calm around us,” Kristy, a 21-year-old tourist from Vietnam, told AFP.
Police said they could not confirm the nationalities of those injured.
But Thai media identified those injured as: Mrs Ong Chey Tao, 70, from Singapore; Miss Ng Icon Leng, 35, from Singapore; Mr Jonto Kurniawan, 73, from Indonesia; Mrs Rosita Kurniawan, 56, from Indonesia; Miss Leena Bong, 81, from China and Mrs Kanuengnit Techorai, 55, who was the driver of the car.
Two Uighur men from western China are on trial for the 2015 bombing that stunned the country.
They have both denied involvement in the attack.
In Friday’s incident, police said the driver, who appeared to be about 40 years old lost control of her Toyota Soluna and crashed through the sidewalk fence at the intersection beside the shrine before it happened to pass through the gate of the shrine and stopped just before it hit the shrine.
Her car hit four women and three men, who were worshiping the shrine. The seven were rushed to the Police Hospital, Chulalongkorn Hospital and Bangkok Christian Hospital.
