Australian, 63, found shot dead on Thai island after ‘being threatened by western man’

Australian, 63, found shot dead on Thai island after ‘being threatened by western man’

Police were investigating today (Thur) after an Australian man was found shot dead on a Thai island.

Kenneth John Pavitt, 62, was slumped in an armchair covered in blood with a colt revolver on the ground next to him in Phuket, Thailand, on Tuesday.

He had a gunshot wound in his chest.

Officers found a handwritten note by his side that claimed a western man had ‘threatened’ his wife and had been harassing him for several months.

The letter claimed that the man had vowed to ‘kill him’ and ‘destroy his friend’s restaurant’ before going on to say that police and the Australian Embassy had not helped him.

Officers from the Patong district police station on the popular holiday island are now probing the death and have informed the Embassy to contact relatives abroad.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Sarit Butnongsaeng, deputy chief of Patong police, said that Kenneth had been found at around 4pm after a resident reported a gun shot.

He said: ‘The Australian foreigner’s body was found wearing a grey tank top and black shorts He died sitting in a chair and there was a wound on the left side of his chest, with blood dripping onto the floor.

‘Inside the room, a letter saying goodbye in English was found on a table in the room, saying that the girlfriend had left in February and could not be contacted and a report was filed at the Patong police station.

‘At the scene there were traces of a struggle found.

We are contacting the people named in the letter to get more information from them.’ Police said that Kenneth, originally from Coburg in Melbourne, Victoria, had been living in Thailand for around six years.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Sarit Butnongsaeng added: ‘Medical staff took the body for an autopsy and the Australian Embassy has been informed of the death.’