The victim tried to intervene in a dispute between three fellow officers who had been drinking before going on duty.
A police officer was shot and killed in Mandalay Region’s Sintgaing Township late Tuesday evening after he attempted to break up a fight between drunken fellow officers.
Deputy police sergeant Hla Min Kyaw died on the spot when he was shot in the chest during a clash between three officers who were reporting for duty at Sintgaing’s central police station.
Tint Naing Tun, another deputy sergeant at the police station, was arguing with two junior officers, Yan Naing Tun and Naing Lin Oo, when Hla Min Kyaw stepped in to intervene in the dispute.
At that point, one of the officers drew his weapon and started firing. Sources with connections to the police station told Myanmar Now that Yan Naing Tun was the shooter in the incident.
A witness said that four gunshots were fired.
“They were drunk and fighting while waiting in line. [The victim] was shot in the lungs,” the witness said, adding that an ambulance arrived at the scene minutes later to collect Hla Min Kyaw’s body.
According to local residents, the body was cremated at the Sintgaing cemetery at around noon the following day.
The three other individuals involved in the incident are currently being questioned at the central police station in Kyaukse, according to police sources.
Violent episodes involving regime forces under the influence of alcohol are not uncommon in Myanmar.
On June 12, a deputy police chief in Sagaing Region’s Kanbalu Township sustained a serious chest injury after drunken officers at the district police station started fighting with each other.
According to local residents, military troops stationed in the area opened fire when they heard a gunfight break out at the station, believing that the police were clashing with anti-regime resistance fighters.
source myanmar-now