BANGKOK: A high-profile Thai pop singer knelt on a road and bowed in apology, video showed Thursday, after a car accident in which police said he killed a woman and critically injured her brother.
Manasawin Nantasen’s actions are in marked contrast to some previous incidents in the southeast Asian country, where the rich and powerful sometimes enjoy impunity for their alleged actions.
He faces a reckless driving charge, with a maximum penalty on conviction of 10 years’ jail. Police said they expect him to cooperate with investigations.
Known as Tik Shiro, he rose to fame in the 1980s and his decades-long music career, fedora hats and moonwalk-inspired dance moves earned him the nickname “Thailand’s Michael Jackson”.
He was driving his Hyundai people-carrier across a bridge in Bangkok when he hit a stationary motorbike, killing a 28-year-old woman named only as Tianporn, and knocking her brother Chakkraphat, 21, off the structure, leaving him critically injured, police said.
Footage on social media showed the 63-year-old star on his knees at the scene, apologising to the victims and their families.
“Throughout my life, I never imagined committing such an incident,“ he said. “It should not have happened,“ he added, bowing deeply.
Local media reports said the celebrity would pay 100,000 baht ($3,000) for Tianporn’s funeral expenses and cover Chakkraphat’s medical costs.
In contrast, the heir to the Red Bull fortune Vorayuth Yoovidhya ploughed his Ferrari into a policeman in a wealthy Bangkok neighbourhood in 2012, killing him on the spot before fleeing the scene.
A son of Pheu Thai MP Chalerm Yubamrung allegedly shot a man in a crowded Bangkok nightclub after a dispute in 2000, leaving him in critical condition, but was later acquitted on grounds of weak evidence.
Investigators are looking into whether Manasawin was driving under the influence of alcohol, police said.
“Manasawin is at the hospital for chest pain, so after that he will be brought in for interrogation,“ local police chief Naren Kruengsanook told AFP, adding he was expected to co-operate with legal procedures.
Thailand has one of the worst traffic safety records in the world, with some 20,000 people killed on the country’s roads each year, according to the World Health Organization.
