‘Playing football in heaven’: Thai cave survivor Duangpetch Promthep remembered as a go-getter as tributes pour in after death
LEICESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND: Tributes have been pouring in for a 17-year-old Thai cave rescue survivor, who died in Leicestershire on Tuesday, February 14. Duangpetch 'Dom' Phromthep, who had moved to the UK to attend a college’s football academy, was found unconscious in his dorm by a teacher on Sunday, February 12, and was rushed to a local hospital where he died earlier this week.
At the time of his death, Dom was studying at Brooke House College in Market Harborough, Leicestershire. The cause of Phromthep’s death was not revealed but Daily Mail reported that the rising football talent suffered a 'head injury'. His death was confirmed by Kiatisuk Senamuang, the founder of the Zico Foundation, a non-profit Thai organization that had helped Promthep win a scholarship to study in England.
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Duangpetc Phromthep's rescue from Thai cave
Promthep was the captain of the Wild Boars (Moo Pa in Thai) football team that got trapped in Tham Luang cave on 23 June 2018 when a flash flood blocked their only exit. The team of 12 boys, aged between 11 and 16, used rocks to dig holes to escape the water, while their coach kept them calm and asked them to use as little air as possible. After 18 long days, the team was rescued by 100 Thai and foreign divers who sedated them with the drug ketamine. Promthep, who was 13 at the time, lost around two kilograms while at least two of his teammates suffered lung infections, Independent reported.
Following Dom’s death, his grieving mother Thanapron Phromthep made an emotional plea for assistance in retrieving the body of her beloved son as well as help in organizing a Buddhist ritual in the UK to ensure his soul was also brought back to Thailand. "Our family is not rich and recently he was our main breadwinner. Please help us bring his body back," said his mother, adding, "It's been hard for us to sleep. We woke up at 2 am and prepared the food and incense for the monks."
Senamuang also paid tribute to the young boy, describing him as a “very strong and very fit” athlete. “Have fun playing football in heaven, be what Dom wanted to be, just go for it, go to watch every match you want to. I wish you a safe journey, if you are free, please come to visit me or just come to see me coaching,” Kiatisuk, also known as Coach Zico, wrote on social media. “Tonight I will remember all the memories we had. I don’t know when I can fall asleep. I will remember all the memories. I love you so much.”
'Why did you break the promise?'
Ekkaphol Kanthawong, the coach who was trapped alongside Duangpetch in 2018, wrote on Facebook that he hoped the news of Duangpethc’s death were not true. “Didn’t you ask me to cheer you once you’re in the national league? Why did you break the promise? Didn’t we make all the plans when you come back to play football and go cycling with us?” he wrote, “Since you were young, you kept saying that you wanted to play in the national league. Why didn’t you do as you said?”
Rick Stanon, the driver who led the team that rescued Phromthep and his teammates in 2018, wrote that he was left stunned after receiving the news. “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 a statement, according to 7 news, “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.”
