Afraid the attacker would make his way into the SAO office, people hid in various places within the building until he left in a car, they said.

Fellow eyewitness Kittisak Polprakan also said he saw the attacker walking out of the center calmly following the massacre.

Most of the children who died at the daycare center in Uthai Sawan, a town 310 miles northeast of Bangkok, on Thursday (October 6) were stabbed to death, police said. After the attack, the perpetrator went home and shot dead his wife and child before turning his weapon on himself, authorities said.

It was one of the worst child death tolls in a massacre by a single killer in recent history.