Victim’s friend says incident happened after night of drinking
PUBLISHED : 31 Aug 2024 at 14:28
A South Korean man fell to his death from the 10th floor balcony of a hotel in Pattaya on Saturday morning.
Police were alerted to the incident at the 38-storey hotel in Bang Lamung district around 5am, said Pol Lt Puttharak Sonkhamhan of the Pattaya City police station.
At the scene, police and rescuers from the Sawang Boriboon Thammasathan Foundation found the body of Byung Yong Lee, a 62-year-old farmer, who reportedly fell from the 10th-floor balcony of his room and landed on a fifth-floor terrace.
There were no signs of physical assault, according to police.
Hotel staff reported that the deceased was part of a group of South Korean tourists who had checked in the day before the incident. One of his friends woke up in the middle of the night and noticed he was missing.
After calling the front desk for help, they found the man’s shoes still in the room. Looking over the balcony, they spotted what appeared to be a body below and called security, who then found the body in the garden of the fifth-floor terrace.
During questioning, a friend of the deceased, through an interpreter, said Byung Yong Lee and his friend had been together for over 30 years. After a night of drinking, they separated to return to their rooms. When Byung Yong Lee’s friend awoke and found him missing, he began searching, which led to the discovery of the body.
Pol Lt Puttharak said the man’s body was taken for forensic examination at the Police General Hospital in Bangkok.
The death was the latest in a series of similar incidents in Pattaya. On Thursday, a man from New Zealand fell to his death from a luxury hotel in this tourist city.
Other incidents included a Thai man who fell from a hotel on June 1, a Russian man from a condominium on June 3, an American man from a hotel on June 4, and a German man from a hotel on June 6.