Vicha Ratanapakdee was a lifelong Buddhist. A diminutive 84-year-old man, “Grandpa Vicha,” as he was known by friends and family, embodied the old saying “he wouldn’t harm a fly.” Walking was Vicha’s way of exploring the city of San Francisco when he first arrived in 2000, to stay with his daughter Monthanus, who attended business school. He came again in 2018 to help care for his two grandsons. When the pandemic hit, Vicha left for his walk and was home before 8 a.m. in time for the boys to start their classes via Zoom.
On the morning of Jan. 28, 2021 when his daughter and grandsons were still sleeping, Vicha’s wife offered him a cup of coffee, but he told her he it could wait until he returned and that he wouldn’t be long. He put on a jacket and a baseball cap and headed out in the quiet Anza Vista neighborhood. Surveillance video captured a tall, dark figure darting across the street at full speed and slamming into the petite Vicha. As the grandfather crumples to the ground, his white hat falls off and he is motionless. The man who pushed him storms back across the street, still clearly agitated.
After her son’s Zoom classes, Monthanus became worried about her father. When she called his tablet, which was missing from home, a police officer picked up and informed her that Vicha had been assaulted and was at the hospital with severe trauma. A doctor asked permission to insert a catheter into a vein in her father’s neck and to drill a small hole in his skull to release the bleeding on his brain.
Meanwhile, Monthanus’s husband, Eric Lawson, rushed home from work, and the couple soon found themselves in the doorway of Vicha’s room in the intensive-care unit. There was a tube protruding from his head, bags of fluid, intravenous lines, and electrode patches, all linked to machines. A nurse explained Vicha had lost so much blood that even a second operation would likely mean Vicha losing most functions, and a neurologist said taking him off life support would be on the table for him if it were his own father. The family didn’t have to make that decision though because two days after arriving at the hospital, Vicha died in his sleep.
As Monthanus grieved her father’s death, a homicide detective with the San Francisco police department called and said they would be charging the unprovoked attack as a murder. The accused was a 19-year-old African American male named Antoine Watson. The case would make international headlines and help to spur the Stop Asian Hate movement.
Despite the videotaped evidence, Watson pleaded not guilty, and his public defender argued that Vicha’s killing was not intentional, but an “impulsive unmotivated assault” that resulted from “the mental-health breakdown of a teenager.”
San Francisco’s then-district attorney Chesa Boudin charged Watson with murder and elder abuse. Court documents show Watson had been cited for “reckless driving, speeding and failure to stop at a stop sign” just prior to the attack. A witness told responding officers that he saw “a Black male, 18 to 30 years old approach and stand over an elderly man lying on the ground. Another witness said he heard a voice yelling, “Why you looking at me? Why you looking at me?” and then “a crushing sound.”
Despite the videotaped evidence, Watson pleaded not guilty. His public defender, Sliman Nawabi, argued that Watson did not intend to kill Vicha, describing the grandfather’s death as an “impulsive unmotivated assault” that resulted from “the mental-health breakdown of a teenager.” At Watson’s bail hearing Nawabi said, “This false narrative that this is a targeted attack on the Asian community, or an elderly man, is misleading and prejudicial.” He asked the court to order a neuropsychological evaluation and proposed releasing Watson to home detention, where his family could look after him, along with requiring “therapy and counseling, so that Watson wouldn’t become another statistic in the criminal-justice world.”
Boudin, a former public defender, ran on a platform of reforming the justice system. Many people saw that as a positive thing, including Monthanus and Eric, who both voted for him. But a statement Boudin made in a Feb. 27, 2021, New York Times article had not just the family, but the world, outraged. “It appears that the defendant was in some sort of a temper tantrum,” Boudin said of Watson’s demeanor prior to the attack. According to Boudin, on the morning of Vicha’s attack, a number of security cameras in the area captured Watson banging a car with his hand. Public defender Nawabi portrayed Watson as someone who “struggled with anger” and had a “series of setbacks” prior to shoving the victim to his death. Watson, according to Nawabi and Boudin, left his home because of a family dispute and got in a traffic accident in San Francisco at 2 a.m. He was cited by police for running a stop sign and reckless driving and then slept that night in his car. Though Boudin tried to wiggle out of it, the statement would haunt him until his recall in June 2022.
As the fourth anniversary of Grandpa Vicha’s death quickly approaches, there has been little movement in the case. According to court records, Watson’s last appearance was on Dec. 24, 2024 in Department 22. His next court date is scheduled for 9 a.m. on Feb. 6, 2025 in the same department. Court number 21001136 is for the murder of Vicha Ratanapakdee for which Watson was arrested on January 30, 2021, and the record states the appearance will be “To Set Jury Trial.” There is currently a backlog of 4,081 cases in San Francisco.
For additional information, visit justice4vicha.org/.