Chea Sokhon was a driver for a Korean restaurant owner operating in the famed temple town of Siem Reap, Cambodia, situated between Thailand and Laos. Two slaps to the face from his Korean boss, after his children were late for school, set off a vibration in Chea Sokhon’s mind that could not be stilled by apology.
He recruited three of his friends and devised a plot for revenge that eventually led to the cold execution of 2-year-old Canadian Maxim Michalik, the son of a Canadian immigrant working abroad to secure the future of his family. He was killed because he wouldn’t stop crying.
The four Cambodian men, shouting from behind masks and waving shotguns entered the international pre-school where the Korean restaurant owner’s children attended, planning to kidnap and kill them. Unable to locate the target of their rage before police arrived, the men took 70 children and teachers hostage.
A six-hour standoff with police followed. The thugs released 30 of the children and began negotiating. The hostage-takers demanded $30,000, six AK-47 assault rifles, six shotguns, B-40 grenade launchers, hand grenades and a get-away van.
Police procured the cash and the van, but when they wouldn’t agree to the weapons, the heartless villains singled out young Maxim, who could not stop crying during the melee, and shot him in the head with a shotgun.
A short time later, the four criminals entered the van provided by police, poised to make their getaway. The police, however, had no intention of allowing them to leave, and shut the gates, much to the surprise of drivers.
Police barely had time to approach and make an arrest as a flood of parents rushed into the school toward their children, crowding the hostage takers and beating them and dragging them across the ground before hand.
