A Pattaya vendor surrendered to police on charges of attacking a Swiss man with a bamboo stick, but only after the tourist allegedly harangued him over a drug deal gone bad.
Henri Selmar Kaspar, 60, filed a police complaint Jan. 5 that he’d been attacked by three street vendors after simply refusing to buy their products. A passing tourist recorded the incident near Bali Hai Pier on video.
Supachai Saladaeng has been arrested for assaulting a Swiss tourist.
Kasper suffered a bloody head wound and police recovered a meter-long bamboo shaft from the scene.
The Swiss man said he’d merely been walking back to his motorbike when he was approached by the vendors. When he refused to buy anything from them, an argument ensued and one man blindsided him with the bamboo.
When he turned himself in to police the next day, Supachai Saladaeng, 25, told a different story.
Kasper, he said, approached him about buying marijuana, which he didn’t sell. So Supachai said he sold the tourist a pack of cigarettes for 100 baht. But Kasper demanded a refund after smoking one cigarette and realizing they didn’t contain weed.
It was then that the argument and physical attack occurred, Supachai said.
After reading online reports about attack, Supachai said he came to set the record straight and to admit he’d been wrong to attack the tourist.
