Man gets 25 years for fatal shooting of cousin in Thai Spice kitchen in Independence
A man who admitted to fatally shooting his cousin inside the kitchen of a Thai restaurant where they both worked has been sentenced to spend 25 years in a Missouri prison.
Porntrep Phonjaroen, 27, of Lee’s Summit, was given the sentence Tuesday in Jackson County Circuit Court. He pleaded guilty in May to charges of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of 23-year-old Wasinee Sankra, who was shot and killed in 2019 at the Independence location of Thai Spice.
According to court records, police were called around 7:20 p.m. on Nov. 16, 2019 to the business located in a strip mall in the 18900 block of East Valley View Parkway. Investigators arrived there to find a woman, later identified as Sankra, on the ground in a pool of blood. She had been shot once in the head, according to court records, and police found a .380 shell casing near her body and a pool of blood.
Customers were inside the store at the time of the shooting. One told police she was eating dinner when she heard a single gunshot and saw a woman fall to the ground. Kitchen staff tried to help her, but she died at the scene.
The owner gave detectives permission to search the store for evidence and review surveillance tapes. One video captured Phonjaroen removing a handgun from a gray bag and immediately firing a shot at the victim “without warning,” a detective wrote in court documents.
Phonjaroen told officers at the scene that he had shot her because he was upset with her work habits, according to court records. He claimed at the time that he only intended to scare her.
Police later found his .380 Glock handgun in a wooded area behind the business that he tossed after the shooting.
