Border officer gets 25 years for murder
Khmer Times | 10 March 2017
The deputy chief of a Cambodia-Vietnam border checkpoint has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing a man and injuring two others in a shootout following a night of drinking last year.
Major Lay Bunthy, 42, and a group of Khmer colleagues had gone to a Vietnamese restaurant for drinks after their shift at the Phnom Din border checkpoint when the incident took place on July 16, 2016.
A Takeo province police officer told Khmer Times the group was at a restaurant in Ban Dok district, on the Vietnamese side of the border, when a senior immigration officer got into an argument with a group of local men.
“Mr. Bunthy got drunk and was angry at the Vietnamese men for verbally abusing him.
"He said they started beating him up, so he took his pistol and opened fire, killing one of the men instantly and seriously injuring two others,” the officer said.
“He was later arrested by Vietnamese police and detained in Ang Yang province, Vietnam.”
Seng Bunthan, an immigration police officer at the Phnom Din border checkpoint, said Mr. Bunthy has appealed the murder conviction.
“The Ang Yang provincial court sentenced him to 25 years in prison and ordered him to pay more than $10,000 in compensation to plaintiffs in the case,” he told Khmer Times.
“But he has disputed the court’s judgment and appealed to the Vietnamese Appeal Court.”
Vietnamese police officers in Ang Yang province were unavailable for comment.
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