'Consumed with loss': A family's grief for two-year-old victim of Thailand nursery shooting

'I'm speechless and numb,' Parkin's mother tells ITV News. 'I want my boy's life back.'

The scale and nature of the atrocity in north eastern Thailand is unlike anything this country has experienced in its modern history.

In the tiny village of Uthai Sawan, families are grieving over the murders of 24 children, and another 12 adults - including one heavily pregnant woman.

Each death has left a family consumed with loss.

We spent time with one couple, mourning the death of their little boy Parkin. He was just two years and seven months old; an infant who was adored by his parents, Suwannachai Kende and Namooy Khlaphimai.

We visit them at their family home a mile from the scene of the nursery massacre. The family are in the midst of three days of prayers and vigil, before the cremation of their son.

The shock and grief are still visceral for the couple.

Parkin’s little sister Namwan is only six and is only alive today because she was too old to be at the nursery.

She’s told her parents about her confusion. She’s been to funerals before, but only for adult relatives.

Her little brother was too young to die, she’s told them. Her cognitive dissonance is shared by many here, reciting Buddhist prayers beside the coffins.

How could so many innocent children have been murdered for no apparent reason?

Suwannachai worked in a local government office next door to the child care centre where most of the victims were killed.

He was busy dealing with those injured in the initial attack at the office, as the killer, Panya Kamrap, then turned his focus to the children nearby.

By the time Suwannachai realised his son was now at risk it was too late.

The frenzied attack lasted approximately two hours in total, including a last rampage on Kamrap's way to his girlfriend’s village a couple of miles away, where he killed another three as he drove.

When he arrived he shot another three neighbours, before torching his truck and heading to his girlfriend’s house. He shot her and her four-year-old son, before turning the weapon on himself.

The motive remains unclear. Kamrap was due to appear in court the next day on drugs charges, having been kicked out of the Royal Thai police force, where he was a Lieutenant Colonel, for possession of a single amphetamine tablet.

His mother had reportedly asked the head of the local government office to intervene in the case and help Kamrap, but the petition had been refused.

It may explain why his initial rage was directed at that office, but the decision to then slaughter so many children with knives suggests a complete contempt for life.

There is some suggestion in local media in Thailand that perhaps his step son was being bullied at the nursery, with other children taunting him because Kamrap was not "his real dad".

But that doesn’t explain why Kamrap then decided to shoot his stepson and his mother.

We will probably never understand the demented mind of a man who sought to kill almost everyone he encountered that morning. But the effects in this rural community are profound.

On couples like Suwannachai and Namooy the burden of grief is unbearable.

The light of their lives has been extinguished with sudden cruelty and they will carry that burden forever.

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