An Australian man has been arrested in Thailand after a teenager’s body was found stuffed inside a suitcase.<\/p>\n
Police allege Simon Carman picked up Tunchanok Donhomla, 17, from the Beach Road vice strip in Pattaya in the early hours of Thursday morning, local time.<\/p>\n
Donhomla’s friends reported her missing on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Police retraced her last moments to the hotel room she had entered with 45-year-old Carman.<\/p>\n
Her naked and battered body was later found inside a black suitcase beside a railway line, about 10 minutes’ drive from the hotel where Carman had been staying.<\/p>\n
Suspicion of murder<\/p>\n
Carman was arrested on Friday evening at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok.<\/p>\n
Officers questioned him on suspicion of murder, which carries the death penalty or life in prison in Thailand.<\/p>\n
The Superintendent of the Pattaya City Police Station said Carman had initially been charged with taking a minor for the purpose of committing an indecent act.<\/p>\n
“We believe he killed her, and he is being questioned on suspicion of murder,” said Colonel Anek Sarathongyu.<\/p>\n
“He has fingernail scratches across his body that are consistent with a struggle, but he denies killing her.<\/p>\n
“He said that she disappeared from the room while [he] was asleep and unaware of anything.”<\/p>\n
Pattaya police said Carman has now been charged with murder, and burying, concealing, moving or destroying a body to conceal the death or cause of death.<\/p>\n
The investigator in charge of the case told ABC News that Carman had denied all the charges.<\/p>\n
The ABC understands that Carman is now in detention in Pattaya Prison.<\/p>\n
In a video taken after his arrest, Carmen was asked about scratches on his neck and claimed he thought it was due to a spider.<\/p>\n
Officers found security camera vision that appeared to show him leaving the hotel on Thursday night with a suitcase matching the luggage the teenager’s body was found in.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
CCTV footage allegedly shows Carman leaving his hotel with a suitcase matching the one Donhomla’s body was found in.<\/p>\n
Supplied \/ Pattaya Police<\/p>\n
Surveillance footage allegedly showed him riding a motorcycle with the suitcase strapped to the back.<\/p>\n
He then sped alongside the railway tracks, disappearing from view for nine minutes, before being picked up again on camera and returning to his hotel.<\/p>\n
After Donhomla was reported missing, officers arrested the Australian two hours later at the country’s main airport in Bangkok.<\/p>\n
He was driven in a police car back to Pattaya, more than 100km south of Bangkok.<\/p>\n
Donhomla’s body was found at 11pm on Friday, local time.<\/p>\n
Police say she was naked and her face showed signs of severe assault.<\/p>\n
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement to the ABC that it was providing consular assistance to an Australian detained in Thailand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Australian man has been arrested in Thailand after a teenager’s body was found stuffed inside a suitcase.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-499389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}