I wasn't yet in the country when the actual incident occurred where the son of the half owner of mega-company Red Bull was involved in the killing of a police officer, then fleeing the scene while drunk. However, I did hear about the aftermath and how people were saying that the playboy son was never going to see jail time. Sure enough, in the past few days these fears came to a close when all charges except for wreckless driving (ironically, from a Red Bull heir) were dropped against Vorayuth Yoovidhya who is the grandson of one of the company's founders.
We all know that rich people get away with stuff that the rest of us definitely would not but when you drunk drive your Ferrari on the streets of Bangkok then crash into a police officer, drag his body down the street a bit before you dislodge his body and then drive home you would think that a person would be dead-to-rights guilty especially since a lot of this is on camera, right? Not in Thailand it isn't.
Thai people love unnecessarily recreating crime scenes and when they did this one of course it matched up perfectly because it was already well-known that Yoovidhya was guilty. But the fix was in right from the start. Everyone knew Yoovidhya was guilty but it conveniently took 5 days for an arrest warrant to be issued (related to the killing, he was arrested the night of the incident but formal charges hadn't been drafted and he was released on a paltry $15,000 bond) and another day for the police to even go to the guy's house at which point everyone acted all surprised that he had fled the country on a private jet. Who would have ever thought that would happen to one of the richest families in Thailand?
It was obvious from the start that any hopes of justice being served and even the police involved who were pretending to pursue justice, weren't really doing so. I am sure a tremendous amount of money was passed down to all people involved to insure that this young rich punk got away safely. The lies began to unfold immediately
The Yoovidhya family later in the same month offered the family of the killed police officer $100,000 dollars to sign documents that will waive their rights to take the family or the driver of the car to court. I think they should have held out for more money and honestly, $100,000 from a billionaire family is a joke. It is just more salt in the wound and shows how little the family actually cares for other people. The police officer's family foolishly accepted.
This did not protect Yoovidhya from state prosecution and it was only through immense pressure from the public and via social media that the government EVENTUALLY sought charges against him. It took them 6 MONTHS to bring up charges of speeding, leaving the scene of an accident, and reckless driving causing death.
Here is in London, clearly mourning the death of the police officer
What would take place over the course of the next 7 and half years is nothing short of a miscarriage of justice in a system that was rigged, predictably, to never punish the rich. Yoovidhya's lawyers came out with BS reason after BS reasons and no doubt paid tons of bribes to various people in the justice system of the country to never extradite the young billionaire back to Thailand.
It took nearly 5 years for the State Department of Thailand to revoke his passport and even longer for them to request assistance in capturing him via Interpol. It really is a complete joke when you see how the officials periodically pretended to actually be pursuing him.
If they were truly interested in capturing him... if the manhunt was real, and it was clear that it wasn't, they could have easily apprehended him at a number of F-1 races where he was a frequent visitor and didn't even try to hide. There was no manhunt, the Thai government officials decided a long time ago that the law doesn't apply to a family worth 20 Billion dollars.
You can be guaranteed that if this was a commoner that had killed the police officer, that the perpetrator would be have gotten a express pass to prison and probably would have been mysteriously suicided in prison as well.
The cries for justice in Thailand are going strong still as there is a relatively powerful boycott on Red Bull products. The company is trying to distance themselves from the family as we speak.
If you consume Red Bull products, maybe consider switching to a different brand, there are plenty of them out there.