Duangphet Phromthep, one of the 12 boys rescued from a flooded Thai cave in a weeks-long operation that made headlines around the world in 2018, died in the UK on Wednesday, British and Thai officials said.
Leicestershire Police said in a statement that Phromthep, who was enrolled in a soccer academy in Leicestershire, England, died Sunday after being rushed to the hospital.
The Thai government’s public relations office for the north said on Facebook that Phromthep, who was 17, died in an accident but didn’t say what happened.
The atmosphere at his house in Chiang Rai province was full of sorrow,
PR Thailand’s statement said.
A Thai non-profit called the Zico Foundation helped Phromthep get a soccer scholarship to study in the UK. On Wednesday, they wrote on Facebook:
Zico Foundation would like to express our sorrow for the pass of Dom Duangpet Phromthep, a scholarship student from Zico foundation,
posting a picture of Phromthep.
A daring rescue.
Phromthep was the captain of the Wild Boars youth soccer team that was rescued in the summer of 2018 after being trapped in a flooded cave network for more than two weeks in the northern Thai province of Chiang Rai.
The 12 boys and their coach got stuck when rising flood water cut them off deep inside the cave. This started a nearly three-week-long international effort to save them.
Divers who helped with the rescue said the conditions were dangerous, with shallow water moving quickly through narrow passages.
In the last, complicated step, which took three days, the boys were put into groups of four and given 5-millimeter-thick wetsuits, full-face mask breathing devices, and air bottles.
Two divers carried the boys’ oxygen tanks and led them through dark tunnels to safety. Each rescue took a few hours, and most of that time was spent in the water.
The first kilometer, when the divers and boys had to squeeze through a narrow, flooded channel, was the most dangerous.
Rescuers had to swim through holes in the water while holding the boys’ oxygen tanks in front of them. After they got through this part, the boys were given to separate, specialized rescue teams that helped them get through the rest of the cave, which they could mostly walkthrough.
Phromthep, who goes by the name Dom, was taken out of the cave with the second group of boys more than two weeks after the first group. He was one of three boys whose birthdays passed while they were deep underground. In his first message to his parents, he asked them not to forget.
I’m fine, but the weather is quite cold. But don’t worry,
he said.
Don’t forget my birthday,
he said.
After being saved, he called the hospital and said he wanted pork and rice for dinner. He also thanked everyone for their help.
The 12 boys and their coach, who were saved, were then taken to a nearby hospital to get better.
When their families heard that their boys were still alive, they were relieved and cried tears of joy. They also punched the air.
When he heard about Phromthep’s death, one of the Thai cave survivors, Prajak Sutham, wrote on Facebook:
We have been through together a lot, good and bad times. We had went through life and death situations together, when you told me to wait and see the time you became a national player. I always believed that you could do it. Last time we met before you left to UK, I jokingly told you that, when you’re back I would ask for your signature. Rest in Peace Bro, we always have each other, the 13 of us.
Rick Stanton, the lead diver on the 2018 rescue mission, told CNN’s Don Riddell that he was shocked by the news and that his fellow rescuers had been told.
When John Volanthen and I first found the Wild Boars at the end of a fraught nine day search, it was Dom who took the lead and wrote the first messages to the outside world,
he said in an email.
As a personal recollection, it was Dom whose unconscious body I swam with as I escorted him to safety on the second day of the rescue mission. I carefully held his precious life in my grasp, bearing the full weight of responsibility towards his survival through the most extreme of circumstances.
The Doi Wao temple in his hometown, Chiang Rai, also sent Phromthep’s mother their condolences.
In a statement, Brooke House College, where Phromthep went to school as a student in the Football Academy, said that his death “has left our college community deeply saddened and shaken.”
This event has left our college community deeply saddened and shaken. We unite in grief with all of Dom’s family, friends, former teammates and those involved in all parts of his life, as well as everyone affected in any way by this loss in Thailand and throughout the college’s global family,
the college’s principal, Ian Smith, said.
According to the statement, Brooke House College is communicating with legal authorities and the Royal Thai Embassy in London. The college is also “dedicating all resources” to helping its students deal with Dom’s death.
