The Thai grandfather had just survived his heart surgery 9 months before, and his doctor told him to walk daily for his exercise. An 84-year old man is dead after a horrific daytime attack in San Francisco's Anza Vista neighborhood. She lowered her head and opened her palms to touch the rug three times. He died shortly after arrival in the hospital. That same month, at a protest for Angelo Quinto a Filipino American Navy veteran killed by police officers in Antioch, Calif., in December 2020 a young woman from Hawaii broke into tears while remembering the story of her Filipino-Japanese family, migrants who worked the pineapple and sugar-cane plantations, and the night the cops detained her father, who struggled with addiction, during a mental-health crisis. ", ABC7's Dion Lim spoke with Ratanapakdee's family that said a temper tantrum is "no excuse" for murdering someone. June 18, 2022. Im a bad daughter, she would say. Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting from Bangkok. That evening, the couple stood at the doorway to her fathers room on the third-floor intensive-care unit. But in practice, proving bias is difficult, especially when theres no explicit expression of it. How long did he lie outside before an ambulance arrived? At one point, a neurologist hinted that if it were his father, he would most likely take him off life support. Family of 84-year-old killed in SF believe attack was racially motivated He was booked on suspicion of murder, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon. }); Less than 24 hours later, a spokesman for the Cherokee County sheriff reduced the rampage to the act of a sex addict having a really bad day; then it was revealed that the same spokesman reportedly promoted T-shirts calling the coronavirus an IMPORTED VIRUS FROM CHY-NA. The rage boiled over. Most of the victims were Asian.. For a short while, Monthanus half believed it, too. Image: San Francisco District Attorney . . eventAction: 'click_image_ads' Im not a lawyer. What kind of person would do this? Throughout 2020, multiple strangers had come at her seemingly out of nowhere. ga('ads.send', { After her sons Zoom classes on Jan. 28, Monthanus began to worry about where her father was. Donations flooded into their GoFundMe page, and they blew past their goal of $10,000 within days. Youre going to survive, Dad, Monthanus told him. 2023 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. window.googletag.pubads().addEventListener('slotOnload', function(event) { February 8, 2021 / 3:17 PM And the fact that another human being would do that to an elderly senior in our community is one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen," said the mayor. Wans group, Community Youth Center, responded by opening a new office in Bayview-Hunters Point, where the attacks occurred. In the United States and elsewhere, private schools asked their Chinese international students not to return for the spring semester; shopkeepers turned away customers who appeared Asian; Chinatowns emptied. When we go to the beach we can dream that he is with us., She plans to bring the other urn back to her fathers hometown in southern Thailand, where the local Buddhist temple has a stupa that holds the familys remains. His orange jumpsuit fit loosely over his tall frame, chains linking his wrists, his hair growing out. But AAPI still attacked, deeper, deeper every day. Monthanuss body went numb. In March, a man waving a Laotian flag told a small crowd at a protest in San Mateo, Calif., that Vicha reminded him of his grandparents, who collected cans to get by, which was why he decided to go on the front lines and patrol Chinatown in Oakland. He told me that Watson lost his job and support structure during the pandemic; in addition to attending college classes and working at FedEx, he had previously gone to therapy and taken medication. }); Now all that remained was the memory of him, the sound of his voice in her head. San Francisco shocked by murder of two elderly men on the same day And the headlines were preoccupied with the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd. I killed Dad.. But inevitably they would get in the car with a poster of Vicha in the back. Theres been a half-million deaths. Today she had prepared a speech and printed a few copies to distribute to reporters. It's not clear Watson's motivation. Man accused of murdering Thai grandfather in S.F. had run-in with eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), She told me, Go wash the blood right away, Monthanus says. The first one involved Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old San Francisco man of Thai descent, who was on his routine morning walk in late January when a man in a hoodie charged in his direction and . When she finished, the defendant lifted his glasses and wiped his eyes. But she and Eric feared that the trauma might manifest years, or decades, later. Officers arrested Antoine Watson on Saturday after serving a warrant at a Daly City home. Whenever she left the house, she tested a can of pepper spray in the bathroom, the fumes burning her eyes, before tucking it in her pocket. . A web camera streamed the ceremony for friends and family abroad. It was just the way that he answered the question that made me feel like he didnt really care about our emotions, about what we were asking about., Boudin, who couldnt discuss the particulars of the case, understood where Eric and Monthanus were coming from. It was still early, Monthanus reminded herself, but she also couldnt shake the feeling that the world seemed to be moving on. A victims advocate assigned by the district attorneys office helped the couple apply for state reimbursement for the cremation, the funeral and other expenses. Her father had been assaulted and taken to a hospital, a police officer said. After her graduation, when Ms. Monthanus married and decided to stay in San Francisco, Mr. Vicha and his wife came to help raise their grandchildren. Hi! he shouted over and over. In the past week the California Legislature approved $1.4 million in funding to track and research racist incidents against Asian-Americans. In recent years, the Asian percentage of the Bayviews population has become five times as large as it was in 1980, while the Black share has shrunk by more than half. Monthanus wailed softly. Activists Protest 'White Supremacy' After Black Man Arrested For Attack Vicha was one of only a few people in the village who spoke English well, Mr. Surachai said. There is outrage over San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin's description of the man police say pushed over and killed an 84-year-old in San Francisco. When Ms. Monthanus expressed her desire to go to graduate school two decades ago, Mr. Vicha supported her decision to enroll in business school at the University of California, Berkeley. For Sarah Wan, a community organizer who has been helping victims of violence in San Francisco, the debate brought back memories from 2010, when hundreds gathered outside City Hall to protest a series of similar reports. Who is Antoine Watson? I think he has to pay for what he did. Kevin Kunishi is an American photographer living in Oakland, Calif., who is known for creating long-form projects that explore aftermath, trauma and identity. Burned By Soft-On-Crime DA, San Franciscans Are Headed For A Recall She wanted to keep him alive. Last week, Mayor London Breed, joined by Police Chief Bill Scott and District Attorney Chesa Boudin, said violence in San Francisco would not be tolerated and that any perpetrators would "be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law," especially those who targeted children or the elderly. Why did this happen? Someone had been falsely claiming to reporters that he was Vichas son and spoke on behalf of the family about what would happen to his remains. Security footage, circulated widely on the internet, shows a man running towards Vicha and throwing him violently to the ground before turning around and fleeing, according to KTVU Fox 2 News.. Vicha died in hospital in the early hours of Saturday and soon after, police reportedly charged a 19-year-old man, Antoine Watson, with murder and 20-year-old female friend, Maylasia Goo, with being an . Legal Statement. And though half of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the Bay Area are low- or very-low-income, as defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (a quarter live in high-income households), they are often seen as beneficiaries of rising inequality. Sliman Nawabi, a deputy public defender representing Watson, disputed the perception that the attack was racially motivated. The video shows that the elderly man had no opportunity to protect himself, Assistant District Attorney Sean Connolly wrote in a motion seeking to detain Watson. If he had been murdered, Monthanus asked Eric, why wasnt it on the news? These shifts werent always visible, but they were there beneath the influx or exodus, beneath the mistrust and grievances, beneath what each person, Black or Asian, took away from the images of attacks flooding the news. Two arrested in connection with death of 84-year-old man in SF - SFGATE Jaeah Lee is a magazine journalist based in San Francisco, with a focus on criminal justice. eventAction: 'click_ads' Crime data from the district attorney offices in San Francisco County and Alameda County, which includes Oakland, show that people of Asian descent were less likely last year to be victims of crimes than other ethnic groups. reporters on a platform technologically tailored to meet the needs of the modern reader. A teenager in San Francisco was allegedly caught on video while bum-rushing an 84-year-old man, who later died as a result of the shocking daytime attack. This unfortunate assault has to do with a break in the mental health of a teenager. She thought about Antoine, knowing there were people in his life who loved him. An uneasiness had hung over her ever since a mob descended on the Capitol early that month, though really, people had been acting crazy for a year. For his family, the death has been devastating both in California and abroad. The court system, which they thought would deliver swift justice, was confoundingly slow. San Francisco Officials Try to Shake Soft-on-Crime Image After Violent Among Asian-Americans, many of whom have endured racist taunts, rants and worse during the coronavirus pandemic, the killing of a defenseless older man became a rallying cry. Its like being bullied. ALSO READ: Suspects Sought In Home Invasion Robbery Of Elderly Woman In San Francisco. Monthanus gave the nurse her fathers name, his medical-record number and his six prescriptions, which included a high dose of blood thinners. Elderly Thai man in San Francisco killed by teen in unprovoked attack. The family of a Thai senior citizen who died after being violently knocked to the . This arrest data includes all information on current and previous arrests for Antoine Watson The grandmother of a teen who senselessly pushed and killed a Thai grandfather has said her grandson should walk free. As the Lunar New Year approached in February, hundreds of people went out to protest the attacks. Rallies on anniversary of death of Asian victim of violence | cbs8.com Three days later an attacker shoved a 91-year-old man in Oaklands Chinatown to the ground, another video that rocketed around the internet. Any other narrative is false, misleading, and divisive. Nawabi added that Watson comes from a biracial family background and had no knowledge of Mr. Ratanapakdees race or vulnerabilities since the elderly man was wearing a mask, hat, sweater and jeans. When Wan first set up her branch there, the Bayview was in the midst of a drastic demographic shift that was occurring throughout the region, marked by an influx of Asians and an exodus of Black residents. A photograph of Vicha Ratanapakdee that hangs in his daughters home. An 84-year-old man was killed after he was brutally attacked on a San Francisco street. The spokespersonnotedthat, if there were such documents, police could and would not be able to release them due to the incident being under an active homicide investigation. For months Mr. Vicha had been pining to return to Thailand but was unable to because of the pandemic. Chan shared a photo of the person he said attacked him, who appeared to be Black, with reporters. It was the first court appearance of 19-year-old Daly City resident Antoine Watson since he was arrested for the assault this past weekend. They asked the state attorney generals office to help them track what they believed to be a growing number of episodes. Amanda Nguyen, a prominent activist, shared Sernoffskys report in a viral Instagram video, along with two others, one about a 64-year-old Vietnamese woman who was robbed in San Jose and another about a 61-year-old Filipino man whose face was slashed with a box cutter on the New York subway. The future me, the real me, says, I wish we could forgive everybody, and everybody should acknowledge this bad thing happened. And right now it feels like, maybe, his family sees me as an enemy. Grandmother of teen who killed elderly Thai man says grandson - reddit At one point, the couple agreed to stop going to rallies for a while. They sailed toward the Golden Gate Bridge, the choppy waters jostling them as they chanted the Five Precepts. Nawabi described the incident as an impulsive unmotivated assault that resulted from the mental-health breakdown of a teenager. if(document.querySelector("#ads")){ To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. SFPD Makes Arrests in Anzavista Homicide 21-024 - San Francisco Police Public safety is a lot bigger than the ability to arrest or prosecute someone, says Tinisch Hollins, who runs the advocacy group Californians for Safety and Justice. I kept my promise, Dad, she said. San Francisco police were quickly able to identify Watson as the assault suspect. She added thatRatanapakdee's family was "horrified" when she relayed the information. After Vicha died, Eric says, he saw so many videos, video after video of attacks in the news. In the . On the same day, Watson was apprehended at his home in Daly City along with 20-year-old Maylasia Goo . Since her fathers death, she and Eric agreed that no one would go out at night without him. a white gunman killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. SF teen who killed 84-year-old man by shoving him to pavement pleads not guilty. Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year old immigrant from Thailand, was preparing to go on his early morning walk in the quiet Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco on Saturday, January 28, 2021. }); SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: A teenager charged in the brutal assault of an 84-year-old San Francisco man that was captured on video in January 2021, will remain in custody following a court hearing on Monday, February 15. When she made it to the hill, she noticed a neighbor working in his garage and asked if he knew where the episode happened the other day. The group filed out to the edge of the deck. There were several violent crimes in San Francisco on Thursday, the article began. A witness told the police they heard a voice shouting, Why you lookin at me? twice before hearing Ratanapakdee, prosecutors said. Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle. They have any language to help anybody.. 'Very open to the idea': Julia Wandelt takes DNA test to verify if she is missing Swiss girl Livia Schepp, Kayla Lemieux: Teacher with prosthetic Z-cup breasts suspended WITH PAY after pics show her dressed as man, Michael Schneider: Psychic detective gives '100%' verdict on whether Julia Wandelt is Madeleine McCann, Lindsay Clancy case: Psychologist reveals psychosis red flags family members could have spotted, 'I'd be horrified if my kids did that': Internet slams eight-year-old's pregnant mom for enabling 'disgusting' behavior. Watson entered a not guilty plea to charges of murder and elder abuse causing death during the brief court appearance. Monthanus wanted to speak to the judge, too. However, his comment to the Timeshassparked the hashtags#JusticeForVicha and #StopAsianHate on social media, which come amid a startling increase in hate incidentsagainst Asian Americans across the United States. },false) The day after Monthanus and Eric's first TV appearance, San Francisco's district attorney charged Antoine Watson, the 19-year-old accused of shoving Vicha to death, with murder and elder abuse . People are grieving. In an unprovoked attack, Antoine Watson, 19, charged at Vichar Ratanapakdee, 84, on Thursday during the senior's morning walk. }) The question is: Does it prevent things like this from happening again? She continued: Regardless of the laws intent, how its received is, This is disingenuous, because were using the same tools to fix the problem. The suspects have been identified as Antoine Watson, 19, and Maylasia Goo, 20, both of . A long, thick tube protruded from Vichas head. She debated whether to show it to her mother, who had become more fragile after a recent stroke. At the time of the attack, Mr. Vicha was only months away from being able to return to Thailand. The weeks went on, and Monthanus and Eric sank deeper into their grief as their suspicions mounted toward homicide investigators, who never seemed able to give a straight answer; toward the district attorney, who seemed to put his interests before theirs; and toward Antoine Watson, about whom they knew little beyond the gaping hole he left in their lives. The submissions came from 31 states and the District of Columbia, with nearly half the reports originating in California and New York. Where did the assault happen? eventAction: 'render' Vicha Ratanapakdee, a Thailand native who his family says emigrated to America to . Police haven't said anything about a possible motive but they have arrested 19-year-old Antoine Watson and charged him with elder abuse, assault with a deadly weapon and murder. Please enter valid email address to continue. Judge orders detention for teen held in fatal attack | Archives The man had accepted a plea agreement for domestic-violence charges, and afterward his victim asked the judge if she could say a few words. Rachel Marshall / (415) 416-4468 / Rachel.Marshall@sfgov.org - SAN FRANCISCO-Today, San Francisco District Attorney Boudin announced that the District Attorney's Office has filed charges against two people for the crime that took the life of 76 year-old private investigator Jack Palladino and will file charges against one person for the murder of 84 year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee. Vicha's Killer Blames Cops for 'Stressing Him Out' Before His Death Antoine grew up in San Francisco and spent part of his childhood with his siblings, parents and grandparents in the Anza Vista area, where Vicha later lived. Intravenous lines and electrode patches linked his body to a constellation of machines and bags of fluid. The number of submissions grew steadily throughout the year, reaching a total of 2,800 by the end of 2020. Suspect In Brutal Assault That Killed Elderly San Francisco - YouTube And you have to take responsibility for the pain and the suffering you caused.". District Attorney responds to the . Eric and Monthanus being interviewed by a local TV station outside the Hall of Justice in San Francisco in July. We said, Dad, we are going to go back soon! Ms. Monthanus recalled. According to Sliman Nawabi, the public defender, Antoine feels remorse and shame for what happened and wishes he could sit down with Vichas family so he could explain the struggles he has gone through in life. Ratanapakdee was brought to San Francisco General Hospital, but he eventually died on Saturday. His public defender, Sliman Nawabi, challenged the murder charge, arguing that Watson did not intend to kill Vicha. Oakland police make arrest in attack on elderly Asian man as concerns San Francisco DA under fire after citing 'temper tantrum' for murder of Watson and his associate, 20-year-old Malaysia Goo, were arrested on January 30 without incident. Monthanus Ratanapakdee praying for her father, Vicha, at the Nagara Dhamma Temple in San Francisco on Monday. That he still had a life ahead of him. Two hours later, Antoine finally entered the room. A representative for the San Francisco Police Department told FOX News that the agency is unable to confirm that the documents obtained by Lim are police documents. Eric also busied himself with emails to architects and building managers in Chinatown, where he was planning a mural a few blocks from the Dragon Gate. Monthanus squatted and scrubbed as her mother poured a jug of water over the concrete, the headlights shining behind them. MEAWW is an initialism for Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide. ga('ads.send', { Left, Mr. Vicha holding his young daughter next to his wife. pg.acq.push(function() { Then the flood came. On her drive home, Monthanus thought about a defendant she saw earlier in the courtroom. Ratanapakdee was walking in the Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco on the morning of January 28 when 19-year-old Antoine Watson ran across the street and violently shoved him to the ground. A local ABC News affiliate had posted footage from a surveillance camera. Why, since her fathers death, did it feel as if there were more cases every day? The San Francisco District Attorney's office stated on Monday, February 8, that their detention plan to hold 19-year-old Antoine Watson without bail was granted by the court. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/magazine/vicha-ratanapakdee.html. Why High-Profile Attacks on SF's Asian Communities Rarely Lead - KQED But the overwhelming majority of hate-crime perpetrators are white.). As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. I want to know why, she said. Social media users rally to honour San Francisco senior pushed to his As two bailiffs escorted Antoine out, the young man in the back left the courtroom and returned with a baby in his arms. We're less than two weeks away from the start of NFL free agency, which begins at 4 p.m. San Francisco police say their suspect Antoine Watson, 19, attacked the senior along Anza Vista and Fortuna Avenues Thursday morning. Police later identified the suspect as Antoine Watson, 19. One month after the Atlanta shootings, a white gunman killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. Maylasia Goo also arrested. Teen Who Pushed Elderly Thai Man to His Death Pleads Not Guilty to Murder Around midnight, after Eric and the boys went to bed, the two women drove to the corner with a bucket, gloves and a dish brush. SAN FRANCISCO (CN) Following shockingly brutal attacks that left two elderly men dead last week, San Francisco officials on Tuesday sought to dispel perceptions that the city is soft on crime under the administration of a progressive, reform-minded district attorney. Suspect In The Murder Of Vicha Ratanapakdee Held Without Bail

Federal Reserve Police Srt, Wrigley Field Section 209, Row 4, Articles A