Three-year-old survivor slept through Thai childcare mass killing

Paweenuch Supholwong sits on her mother's lap and fidgets with her pigtails as her mother tells the remarkable story of how the three-year-old girl survived Thailand's worst mass killing.

She was the only child to emerge unscathed from a daycare after a former police officer massacred preschoolers while they napped last Thursday.

Two dozen children were among the 36 people shot and slashed to death in an attack that shattered the serenity of the rural township of Uthai Sawan, robbing the small farming community of much of its youngest generation in the blink of an eye.

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Paweenuch was deeply asleep and covered by a blanket on the floor when the attacker burst through the front door and killed 22 of her classmates who lay around her — apparently missing her because he thought she was already dead, her mother Panomplai Srithong said.

Another child survived with serious injuries and remains hospitalised.

Panomplai Srithong and her husband were at work in a Bangkok electronics factory when they heard that their daughter's daycare had been attacked and that no one had survived.

Like many from Uthai Sawan, they had moved to the capital for work and send home money to their family, leaving three-year-old Paweenuch in her grandmother's care.

After an initial panic, they learned that their daughter had survived and they drove home to Uthai Sawan as quickly as possible.

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"Breathing was difficult, I can't describe it, but when I found out my child survived I was relieved," Panomplai said.

"But I also wanted to know if she had any injuries, if there was any collateral damage."

She said from what her daughter has told her, she had been asleep under her blanket turned toward a wall and she doesn't seem to have seen or heard the attack.

Rescue workers carried her out of the building with her eyes covered so she didn't see the grisly scene.

She did ask her grandmother about where her best friend was, and she told her that her friend "has passed".

"That's when she found out that her friend died," Panomplai said.

"This was the person who was sleeping next to her."

Panomplai's adult cousin was killed outside the daycare, and she attended a temple service Saturday for him and other victims.

"There's both good luck hidden in bad luck — I'm lucky that my child is okay but I lost my cousin," she said.