PATTAYA — An elderly French national fell to his death at Pattaya’s largest shopping mall Thursday night, according to police, who ruled it a suicide.
The 71-year-old man made the plunge at about 11:30pm from the sixth floor of CentralFestival Pattaya and landed on an escalator of the second floor, according to Col. Apichai Krobphet, chief of Pattaya police.
“It was a definitely suicide,” Apichai said, citing accounts of eyewitnesses who saw him deliberately jump.
The French Embassy has been contacted, the police colonel added. He said the man was in Thailand on a tourist visa.
It’s the second public suicide in a mall this week. On the evening of Nov. 25, a man plunged to his death at the Siam Paragon shopping mall in Bangkok in front of a crowd of horrified shoppers.
Another foreigner also attempted to do the same at CentralFestival Pattaya on Nov. 24, but police officers talked him down, Apichai said.
