Duangphet “Dom” Phromthep, the 17-year-old former captain of the Wild Boars soccer team made famous by their extraordinary rescue from a flooded local cave in 2018, had left Thailand in a blaze of publicity last September for an English boarding school on a full football scholarship.

After two years of Covid delays, Dom was giddy with excitement about a move he hoped would bring him closer to his dream of playing for Thailand’s national team – and also respite from years of unwanted public attention as a “Thai Caves Boy”.

By February 14 this year he was dead, and a fortnight later his family’s shock and grief were once again being captured on camera as they struggled to understand what had happened.

They say they are still unclear how he died, and desperate for coroner’s findings next month to provide unanswered questions. But they also fear what it will tell them.

Police declared Dom’s death not suspicious at the time and a coroner in England’s Leicestershire, where Brooke House College offers a special program for promising young footballers, withheld provisional findings after Dom died in Kettering General Hospital with no family by his side.

“Investigations and inquiries are continuing and I’m not in a position to proceed,” senior coroner Catherine Mason said on February 22, adjourning the inquest until July 6.

Brooke House principal Ian Smith said in a statement at the time that the college was “united in grief” with all who loved Dom, and was liaising with authorities and the Royal Thai Embassy in London.

“This event has left our college community deeply saddened and shaken,” he said.

Beyond that, no explanation was offered.

On February 12, the day Dom was found unconscious in his school dormitory, his mother Noy (as she is known) secured an emergency passport renewal and rushed to apply for a visa from the British embassy – the same one that feted Dom before he left Thailand and posted his picture on its Instagram account – only to be told it would take five days.

The best she could do, she told The Weekend Australian in her first major interview since his death, was to have a doctor put a phone to her dying boy’s ear and whisper love and Buddhist prayers down the line to soothe his soul’s journey.

Noy is stoic as she talks of the empathetic, fun-loving son she adopted as an infant from relatives and raised as her own, a young man at the peak of physical fitness with no obvious health problems. But she is struggling with grief and anger.

As a practising Buddhist she worries her torment over Dom’s unresolved death, that he died alone and could not be cremated in Thailand where his family could pray over his body, is preventing him from being at rest.

Many had been eager to capitalise on Dom’s name when he was alive, but promised help to bring Dom’s body home did not materialise and the family could not afford the air tickets to England, nor bear alone the cost of repatriating their son.

The back-and-forth through intermediaries – discussing the bureaucracy and price of repatriating his body versus his ashes at a time of deep grief – was too much. When the school offered to conduct a funeral, Noy accepted. It seemed the only option.

Dom’s football mentor, Kiatisuk “Zico” Senamuang, Thailand’s former national captain who arranged the scholarship through his eponymous foundation, attended in the family’s place.

At home in Mae Sai, a border town in Southeast Asia’s notorious Golden Triangle, Noy performed a Buddhist water ceremony to bring merit to her son in his next life.

She waited through a service she did not understand, then chants by saffron-robed monks, for Dom’s casket to be opened so she could see her boy’s face, and to ensure there was money in his casket to ease the passage to his next life. She waited right up until the closed casket rolled through beige curtains and into the crematorium furnace.

The son who had once been returned to her in a global spotlight, was sent home days later in a cardboard box.

Caves rescue

Dom was 12 years old when he was trapped by flooding inside Tham Luang cave with his 11 Wild Boars teammates and assistant coach, Eakapol “Ek” Chantawong.

It took nine days for British and Thai divers to locate them 3.2km inside the treacherous underground complex, all huddled on a muddy rise above the water.

Families of the boys camped outside the cave since their disappearance on June 23, 2018, erupted in relief when told they had been found. Footage taken of that ­moment shows Noy, drawn but elated, holding a grainy picture of all 13 inside the cave taken by the British recreational divers who found them.

She remembers thinking at the time he could be out for supper.

“When we first heard they had found Dom, my mother said to me we should maybe take him for a check-up and cook him sticky rice,” Noy said.

“We thought it would be easy to get them out.”

It took 10,000 civilian and military volunteers from 17 countries, including 100 divers, among them Australians Richard Harris and Craig Challen, to pull off one of the most celebrated rescues in living memory.

Throughout the 18-day mission to find and rescue the 12 boys – aged 11 to 16 – and their coach, Noy swung between optimism and ­despair. At her lowest point, after being told scratch marks had been found on the walls of the cave, she walked 10km home in the dark, crying all the way.

Still, she insists: “I believed he would survive. If people were fighting so hard to find them they must believe there is a chance they could be alive.”

In the end the boys and their coach were sedated to stop them from panicking, fitted with full-face oxygen masks and dived out through submerged cave chambers in a perilous eight-hour journey to the cave’s entrance.

Not even the rescuers expected all to survive yet, miraculously, by July 10, all 13 were recovering in hospital and reunited with their families.

The “mission impossible” was complete but it had only whetted the global appetite for the Wild Boars. Hollywood agents jostled for the rights to tell their story, and the Thai government set up a creative media committee to oversee the boys’ engagements and negotiate book and film contracts, gagging them for years from talking publicly about their experience.

The Wild Boars – all except Adul Samon who is Christian – were whisked off to a mountaintop monastery overlooking Thailand’s border with Myanmar’s Shan state to be ordained as novice monks and to pray for Saman Gunan, the Thai Navy SEAL who died during the rescue. The creative media committee then sent them on a thank you tour; to Argentina, Brazil, the US, UK and Japan.

For all the controls, the boys could not escape the sometimes-obsessive attention, the massive online fan clubs, nor those who would exploit their fame for commercial gain.Within months of their rescue an Oxford-trained child trauma expert who had advised officials on how to care for the boys ­lamented the constant, daunting attention. “We’re not letting them recover,” Rebecca Sheriff told Sports Illustrated. “It was obvious before they were even out of the cave that it was going to be very difficult for them to use their normal coping strategies, in which case they would have been fine.

“Everyone wants to jump on it. All the embassies, everybody. Everyone loves it. You’re damaging these children.”

It was overwhelming for all the Wild Boars, though for some, such as Phipat “Nick” Phothi, life has ­finally returned to normal.

The 20-year-old works as a courier by day but spends his free time volunteering for Mae Sai’s emergency services.“I saw how so many people helped at the cave and it made me want to volunteer. I love doing it,” Nick told The Weekend Australian.

He is “not scared of anything” since their ordeal, he says, but is ­relieved he can now lead a life free of the intense public interest that dogged others such as Dom and Ek, the photogenic team captain and coach.It didn’t take long for that to take its toll on Dom, who turned 13 inside Tham Luang cave.

Says Noy: “I got the same child back when he came home from hospital but he was different with strangers.”

The boy who once enjoyed working the market stall and chatting to customers now shrank from attention.

“When people came to buy something from the shop they would say, ‘Is Dom home? Can I see Dom? I want to talk to him’,” Noy says.

“So many people wanted to see him. Old people, kids, all ages. They would take photos and talk to him. I could see him stiffen up and his face would change. I wanted to protect him from that uncomfortable feeling.

“When I picked him up from school he would hide behind the bushes until he saw my car and then quickly jump inside.

“If someone approached the car he would say; ‘Mum, don’t talk to them. Just start driving’. He would say to me; ‘When is it going to go back to normal like when no one knew me?’”

It was as though the world, having come together to rescue the boys, now felt a proprietorial claim on them.

Many of their most ardent fans were women of a similar age to their own mothers, but with the money and time to involve themselves in the boys’ lives. A few even took on de facto “mum” roles, handling their schedules, speaking with teachers when their grades dipped, ferrying them to appointments.

Throughout it all the boys remained grounded, polite and grateful for their rescue. But when the chance came for Dom to ­attend a high school football academy in Chiang Mai, five hours away, then two years later to study in England, he jumped at it.

“He wanted to escape from all that because in Thailand whenever he went somewhere most people knew him,” Noy says.

“He wanted to have his life back and thought he would get more privacy in the UK. He just wanted to be a normal boy.”

New beginnings

Almost from the moment he could walk, Dom was playing football, though as a small child he was not allowed a proper ball.

His parents had worried he might chase it onto a nearby road so his grandmother fashioned one out of paper that he would bounce again and again, from one foot to another.

His talent was obvious, and by the time he joined the Wild Boars as a plucky eight-year-old striker he was already dreaming of becoming a professional footballer.

The Zico Foundation wasn’t the first to recognise Dom’s promise but it was the one to fulfil Dom’s ambition to train abroad.

The non-profit foundation set up by Thai soccer legend Kiatisuk “Zico” Senamuang was keen to arrange the scholarship to the Brooke House football academy, which had already turned out some professional players.

The association would be good for Dom, but also for the school and the Zico Foundation which enthusiastically promoted its role in his move.

In the weeks before he left Thailand, Dom spoke frequently with Adul Samon, now studying in the US and the only Wild Boar who spoke English at the time of their rescue.

“Dom would ask me questions quite often; how am I doing, how is school, how much English did I have to learn, how long did it take to be able to speak English,” says Adul, who starts US college in August from his high school in New York state.

“I told him; ‘Dom, your main focus is playing soccer because your school is a sports school. Of course it’s going to be hard ­learning the language but your English will improve the longer you live there’.”

Of the 12 boys, Adul has most adroitly handled the public ­attention, which he also credits with bringing opportunities that otherwise would never have come his way.

The handsome 18-year-old with boy-band hair and thousands of online followers – who hopes one day to become a doctor and maybe work for the UN – says the whole team was shocked by news of Dom’s death and spoke late into the night.

“It was really hard to accept because I’d just talked to him,” Adul tells The Weekend Australian. “What could have happened to him?”

Dom had continued to reach out for advice from England, and the two had talked in the weeks ­before he died. He was stressed and cramming for the notoriously difficult IELTS (International ­English Language Testing System) exam.

“The minute I heard that I was like: ‘No way, this is so hard, Dom. You just got there’,” Adul recalled.

“I knew his English level and how hard the IELTS test is so I was surprised the school didn’t know Dom’s English wasn’t ready.

“I guess it must have been a very difficult time for him. He had to adjust to the environment, new teammates, the language.”

Still, he adds: “I am pretty sure he was fine.”

Noy is less certain. Asked if Dom enjoyed his time in the UK she pauses before replying: “It’s still unclear to me.”

They spoke less the longer he was away, and she began to have bad dreams. In one, he said he was not coming home.

She rang him the next day, ignoring her husband’s warnings not to disturb him. No, he wasn’t lonely, Dom assured her. Things were getting better, and there were other foreign students also struggling with language.

But the school experience was not what either had expected, says Noy. Schoolwork came second to football for Dom, who had believed Brooke House would be like his Wachiralai School in Chiang Mai, where sport was the focus and academic studies less of a priority. In fact, Dom’s scholarship required him to continue online studies with Wachiralai as well as fulfil requirements at his new school.

“If I could turn back time I would not allow him to go because he was happy in Chiang Mai,” says Noy. “I asked the coach if Dom would need to study English ­before he left and he said ‘no, they only need vocabulary for football, not for class’. I was OK with that because I know my son loves football. They told me this is the best soccer school for kids who want to become professional players.”

Dom’s grandmother Soy Phromthep told The Weekend Australian that “maybe Dom had too much pressure on him”.

“Maybe what happened was an accident,” Soy says. “Or maybe someone did something to him.”

There have been unsubstantiated rumours of bullying.

Both women say they trust the British coronial system to provide answers, though others question whether an English family would have to wait six months for them.

The Weekend Australian asked the Leicester police, the Leicester coroner’s office, the Royal Thai Embassy in London, the British Foreign Office, the British Home Office and Brooke House College about measures taken to communicate directly with Dom’s family and why they should still be in the dark more than three months after his death.

The school told The Weekend Australian in a statement on Friday: “Out of respect for Dom and his family’s wishes, and due to the ongoing coroner’s inquest, we will not be able to share further details, a position agreed with the Royal Thai Embassy in London who have provided unstinting consular support”.

Asked why an emergency visa would take five days, the British Foreign Office referred The Weekend Australian to the Home Office, which advised it could provide answers only if an application number was provided. Questions regarding embassy communication with the family was a matter for the Foreign Office, it said.

The coroner’s office said it was “bound by the Guide to Judicial Conduct, so it is not appropriate to respond to the matters you raise”.

Repeated attempts to contact Thailand’s London embassy were unsuccessful.

The family’s torturous wait has been compounded by the pain of having not been by Dom’s side, of not seeing his face nor holding his body before his cremation.

Asked why there was no public appeal for help to bring his body home, Noy says she “did not want to create more problems”.

“When the boys were trapped in the cave it cost so much to rescue them, I thought people might not want to help again,” she says. “But I regret not going. I wish I could have seen him with my own eyes.”

The Zico Foundation was also clear it would not accept donations for Dom for fear of “fraudsters”.

Multiple attempts to reach Coach Zico went unanswered, though a Zico Foundation spokeswoman said it helped with funeral and repatriation costs alongside the Thai-owned Leicester City Football Club and the Thai ­embassy. The embassy co-­ordinated all arrangements.

But the spokeswoman stiffens when questioned why Coach Zico and his wife flew to England for the funeral, and not Dom’s family.

“It’s not for me to say,” she says curtly. “We did all we could do.”

How it all panned out is a painful subject that Noy is reluctant to discuss.

“We have to think about Dom’s spirit,” she says.

It will not find peace if she ­cannot resolve her anger.

But the Wild Boars (Moo Pa) Academy founder and coach, Nopparat “Nop” Kantawong, says he cannot understand why the coroner’s report is taking so long, nor why more was not done to help Dom’s family attend the funeral and bring his body home for ­cremation.

He blames himself, also, for not pushing harder for Dom to be ­returned to his family.

“I protested (that) they must bring his body back but they said it was a lot of bureaucracy,” says Nop, exasperated.

Many were eager to be associated with Dom, a talented player and bankable name whether or not he fulfilled his football ambitions, he notes.

The public attention had made all the kids uncomfortable but in the wake of the rescue Dom had sought reassurance the football opportunities opening up to him were not simply a result of his ­unwanted fame.

When the Zico Foundation ­announced Dom’s death in an ­online press conference, Nop and Ek had tried to join the Zoom call but no one would let them in.

“I wanted to ask questions,” Nop says. “Why did no one demand an explanation from the school? It is not normal.”

It is a phrase uttered repeatedly by those struggling to come to terms with Dom’s death.

Life after death

On February 13, as Dom lay on life support in Kettering hospital, he came to his grandmother in a dream.

She would need to “dress beautifully tomorrow because many people will come to see you”.

He reappeared after his death, urging her to let go of her anger. “He said: ‘Just get rid of it. I have already passed because it’s my time so you have to let me go in peace’,” says Soy.

“That’s the reason I don’t fight. Because I believe in these things. He had a very good heart and he never did anything to hurt my ­feelings.”

Dom has visited Noy in her dreams too, asking her not to move the dresser in the living room that is still stuffed with his things. The room is filled with the detritus of a large family: a dining table littered with papers, piles of shoes on the floor, family photographs plastering the walls.

Noy’s favourite is one of all four kids crowded around a birthday cake for eight-year-old Dom. He is in soccer gear, as he is in all but two pictures taken in the weeks after his rescue in which he and his teammates wear the saffron robes of novice monks.

Dom’s red-and-black racing bike still rests against a far wall, his plastic house slippers below the step where outdoor shoes are ­removed.

At meal times a place is set for him still. “We just make it like usual. We haven’t changed anything,” Noy says wearily.

The grieving mother sees signs of Dom’s presence everywhere.

The other day, Dom’s siblings – aged 23, 20 and 19 – walked to the 7-Eleven for treats because the car wouldn’t start. When they returned, also bearing chocolates for their lost brother, the car engine turned over again, she says – as though appeasing his spirit has the power to fix mechanical problems.

She wants her son to be remembered as an optimistic boy – “a kid with a good heart, generous, who liked to share”.

He loved football, riding bikes and motorcycles, and Doraemon, the earless manga cat. He listened to Linkin Park and liked to joke around. He had become interested in girls. Like most teenagers, he also regularly disappeared when it was time to do household chores.

And he never shrank from a fight – ready always to defend his siblings and friends.

“He was not scared of much, not like his mum,” Noy says with a smile.

Dom saw ghosts after he was rescued from the cave. Just eyes, never faces. Most of the boys did, he told his mother.

Spirits seemed to shadow them in those days as though death itself felt cheated.

In reality it was the living that haunted the boys, stopping them on the streets, trolling them on ­social media, tracking their every move via multiple fan clubs.

Thais in general are superstitious people but in rural Thailand ghosts play an integral part in culture and belief.

Babies are given nicknames at birth to confuse malign ghosts. Millions of dollars is spent annually on amulets and astrology.

No one imagined any harm could come to Dom in a British boarding school, but when news of his death filtered through some saw more evidence of “Nang Non’s vengeance”.

The mountain range above Tham Luang cave is named for a mythical princess, Nang Non, who ran away with a royal horse groomer after falling pregnant to him. The two hid in the cave but Nang Non’s lover was killed by the king’s guards as he searched for food. Hearing of his death, the princess killed herself with a hairpin and her spirit remains in Tham Luang – so the legend goes.

Those who believe in the cave’s curse point to the climbing death toll from the rescue: two Navy SEALS divers; the father of Wild Boar Teeraphat “Biw” Somkaew; a footballer who played Coach Ek in the Netflix series; a volunteer rescuer fatally shot; and now Dom.

Even those who don’t, recognise the rescue has brought mixed blessings.

Mae Sai has profited some from the remarkable story, with Bangkok investors streaming in after the rescue to build resorts and restaurants for an expected tourist rush cut short by the pandemic.

At Tham Luang on a Tuesday in late May, a smattering of tourists are ferried up a now-sealed road in safari jeeps. They use stairs and handrails to move through the cave’s lit cathedral entrance to the first chamber, though the rest of it – all 11 treacherous kilometres – is off limits.

Where dozens of makeshift food and media tents pitched on muddy ground for the rescue, a new visitor centre is staffed by two women dozing with their heads on the counter.

The Wild Boars boys and coach Ek are reported to have received about $100,000 for their story from Netflix, which most invested in land and education.

That has led to petty jealousies and exploitation.

The Wild Boar football academy is no longer active after losing its sponsorship to rumours it also received a windfall – a fiction, Nop insists, but one difficult to dispel. Nop also suffers from ongoing neck injuries sustained in a fall outside the cave when the boys went missing.

Incredibly, Coach Ek – still hailed a hero for keeping the boys alive inside the cave – is struggling to keep his own Eakapol Football Academy afloat. Post-rescue, many offered support in exchange for appearances or endorsements but the money never came and he remains reliant on fan club donations. The boys have had similar experiences.

The 30-year-old coach, who was orphaned at nine in Myanmar then raised in a Buddhist temple in Mae Sai, says his dream is to coach his junior team to the highest provincial grade – though when we meet he is mowing an overgrown block that will serve as a practice field now the local school is no longer available.

Without a Wild Boar in his team – all too old now for junior leagues – sponsors and scholarships have dried up.

“Scholarships are like a business,” he shrugs. “You have to be a VIP to get it, not a boy from a small town. If there is a VIP in your team, then you’ll get sponsors.”

He was thrilled for Dom when his own scholarship came through because “it was a big dream for him to go to England and Dom was really talented”.

The two had been close but spoke less often once he got there.

“He got quieter the longer he was there,” says Ek. “I am wondering what happened to him. For example, the news said they found him in his dormitory at noon. I would like to know what happened before noon. They have kept everything shut down. It’s very strange.”

He stays in touch with the Wild Boars and thinks about his cave experience “when faced with difficult situations”.

“It was the worst thing that has ever happened in my life because it was like being trapped between life and death,” he says.

“Every day inside was so long. My life changed after the cave because I learned an important lesson in there – to not be careless with life.

“If I could choose, I would go back to the time when I lived a normal life. Most of us (Wild Boars) think the same way.”

Remains come home

Dom’s ashes were finally returned to his family in early March. Noy flew to Bangkok to collect them from Coach Zico at Suvarnabhumi Airport where dozens of cameras captured the moment.

His funeral rites were performed by the same abbott who ordained the boys in Mae Sai’s quirky mountaintop temple embellished with purple dragons and a giant scorpion statue. His ashes were scattered in the Mekong River.

All 11 Wild Boars and their former coaches came, including Adul Samon from New York.

Hundreds of mourners paid their respects and brought gifts for the little “funeral house” Dom’s family had filled with things he might need for his next life.

There were soccer balls, of course, his red and black racer bike, football boots and his favourite foods.

Three months later the empty house sits abandoned in the car park of another temple on Mae Sai’s scruffy fringes – anonymity at last for a boy who never wanted the spotlight.

- Additional reporting by Jacquelin Magnay in London.

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