Mother of Dashawn Longfellow, Ex-Marine Stabbed in Thailand, Says Cop Needs to Act Now
Tammy Longfellow said police should kill the man who murdered her ex-Marine son.
Aug. 16, 2010— -- The mother of a decorated U.S. Marine veteran who was brutally stabbed to death in Thailand this weekend says local authorities are not doing enough to find her son's killer and pleaded for harsh punishment for the fellow Thai boxer who allegedly ended his life.
"I want them to kill the guy that did this to my son," Tammy Longfellow told ABC News today. "I hope they punish him beyond recognition for taking a boy's life that didn't deserve this."
Dashawn Longfellow, 23, was in Thailand learning a new culture and practicing Thai boxing, his mother said. He previously served in Iraq and Afghanistan, where a roadside bomb exploded under his truck, damaging his right arm and filling 80 percent of his body with scrap metal. He was awarded the Purple Heart for his service to the country.
"I just feel like they're not trying hard enough," Tammy Longfellow said. "The cops ain't doing nothing fast enough. They keep telling me they're closing in on him. Well how long do you think you're going to close in on somebody to catch him?"
Longfellow said her son refused an opportunity to leave the Marines after sustaining the injuries, choosing instead to fulfill his service obligation.
"They were going to send him home, but my son said, 'No, I have four months to go in the Marines. I'm staying like a man.'"
After he finished in the Marines, the Oklahoma man "decided he wanted to do more in life. So he decided to become a Thai fighter and he decided to go to Thailand," Tammy Longfellow said.
Another boxer now stands accused of his murder.
Saturday night, Longfellow went to pick up his girlfriend, Ooy, at a bar on the island resort of Phuket where she worked as a bartender when he ran into fellow kickboxer, 28-year-old Lee Aldhouse of Britain. Aldhouse had lived on-and-off in Thailand for four years and competed on the club boxing circuit in Phuket, but police described him as currently unemployed.
Tammy Longfellow said Ooy told her the two men got into a fistfight when her son tried to go to the bathroom and Aldhouse tried to stop him.
"The dude kept pushing my son. He knew my son was another Thai fighter," she said. "He kept pushing my son. My son got the best of him in a fight. Everybody pulled them apart."
After that altercation, Longfellow said Aldhouse allegedly followed Ooy and her son home, grabbed a knife from a convenience store and stabbed him outside the Yanui Paradise Resort.
Longfellow went into the apartment and told Ooy that he thought he had been stabbed.
"He fell to the ground," his mom said, "and he told her he loved her, to call his mom and he loved me."
Thai authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Aldhouse and believe he is still in the Phuket area but have alerted air and sea ports in case he attempts to flee, police Lieutenant Colonel Anukul Nuket told the Associated Press.
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