Navy Probes Killing of Sailor by Thai Policemen

A 19-year-old sailor from Torrance, shot and killed after allegedly shooting two Thai police officers last month, had taken a revolver from one of the officers during a conversation just before the gunfire, Navy officials investigating the death said Wednesday.

Though wounded, Todd Unzueta managed to flee about 40 yards before he collapsed and died. The two officers were in stable condition, a Navy spokesman said.

The shooting occurred in Pattaya, a seaside resort about 90 miles southeast of Bangkok, where Unzueta was on leave from the aircraft carrier Ranger, the spokesman said.

Providing several new details on the incident, Capt. John Cook, a naval attache at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, said Unzueta “managed to get the gun away” from the holster of one of the officers.

Returned Fire Before Leaving

“They were talking and Unzueta just grabbed it,” Cook said in a telephone interview. “The police officer was unsuspecting because there was no fighting, no arguing, nothing that would have indicated to him that there was any problem.”

After about 10 seconds, during which the officer tried to persuade Unzueta to give back the gun, Unzueta shot the officer, Cook said. The second officer then shot Unzueta, who returned fire before leaving the scene, he said.

An autopsy by Thai police indicated that Unzueta had been drinking, but Navy officials were planning a separate, more thorough, autopsy in Okinawa, Japan, Cook said.

The Ranger, part of the seven-ship Battlegroup Echo, had been at sea for about 90 days on a mission in the Persian Gulf area, said Cmdr. Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii.

Unzueta, who joined the Navy on Dec. 15, 1986, as a fireman recruit, was on liberty from the carrier and had been with other sailors earlier in the evening. He was later seen with a Thai woman who may have witnessed the shooting, Cook said.

Three separate investigations are being conducted, two by the Navy and one by the Pattaya police department, Cook said. The Pattaya police expect to conclude their investigation in about two weeks, but the Navy inquiries will probably take longer, he said.

“The U.S. authorities and Thai authorities are cooperating and working together and everybody wants to find the truth,” Cook said. “We’re trying to understand it and we wish it hadn’t happened. The Thais are very hospitable people and they wished it hadn’t happened, too.”

Unzueta’s parents, Jean and Roland Unzueta of Torrance, said Wednesday that they have not received word of developments in the investigations since Nov. 24, when Navy officials broke the news of their son’s death. Officials told them they would receive the results of the investigations by the end of December.