Broken Pattaya CCTV cameras are hindering police efforts to find a hit-and-run driver who killed a homeless woman.
The unidentified woman in her 50s was struck and killed in front of the Royal Garden Plaza at about 1:20 a.m. on June 9, well after the national curfew began.
Manoon Boonlert, a Pattaya municipal police officer, was parked outside Central Festival Pattaya Beach and saw a Toyota Vigo speed past him. He didn’t bother to pursue, despite the fact the driver was out two hours past curfew.
Shortly after, Manoon drove down Beach Road and saw a Pattaya Police car at Royal Garden and the body of the dead woman on the street.
The pickup driver was long gone by that point and, when police went to check nearby CCTV cameras, they found the units broken. There are few clues helping to identify the driver.
Pattaya officials have spent hundreds of millions of baht over the years to buy cameras, but relatively little on maintenance, leaving a majority of the cameras damaged or inoperable.
News of the accident spurred social-media chatter that the victim was a woman known as the “dancing grandma” who performed regularly on Walking Street. That turned out to be another case of fake news, as a reporter found she’s alive and well in Naklua.
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