These stories have prompted continuous news coverage and social-media obsession, and beneath it all there lurks a desire to understand what is driving the attacks and how, exactly, race is playing a role. In a quiet room upstairs draped in gold and red, she knelt before a shrine of Buddhas, vases filled with fresh tulips and a black-and-white portrait of her father. It looked like blood, but she wasnt sure. Monthanus didnt always agree with her father, but she loved his spirit. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has sparked outrage on social media after telling the New York Times that 19-year-old Antoine Watson was "in some sort of a temper tantrum" when he . The stories filled Monthanus with questions. Ms. Monthanus says she and her family will charter a boat under the Golden Gate Bridge and scatter some into the Pacific Ocean. She found it hard to follow the legal vocabulary and felt bad asking Eric to explain terms and intricacies. According to the San Francisco District Attorney's office, Watson had been observed and contacted by San Francisco Police officers earlier that morning for traffic infractions resulting in a minor collision and was issued a citation. Then Came a Brutal Attack. Killing of Vicha Ratanapakdee - Wikipedia 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. Watson, the court documents state, had been cited for "reckless driving, speeding and failure to stop at a stop sign" in the hours before the attack. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/magazine/vicha-ratanapakdee.html. The law was celebrated for recognizing the need to better track violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. He had just gone to dinner with a few relatives visiting from Beijing. Evan Sernoffsky reports. On the morning of Jan. 28, when Monthanus and the children were still asleep, he prepared to head out. Watson can be seen running up to Ratanapakdee and violently shoving him in video from SF CBS Local near the corner of Fortuna and Anza Vista. Video footage played during witness testimony this week shows Antoine Watson . He told Monthanus that when the time came, he wanted to be scattered in the bay, the place that became his home. She remains puzzled why on the morning of the attack he left without his Buddhist amulet, a talisman of protection that he always wore around his neck. Antoine Watson held in attack on 84-year-old victim. another video that rocketed around the internet. eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), Social media users rally to honour San Francisco senior pushed to his 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. 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. He died shortly after arrival in the hospital. . KGO obtained surveillance footage which apparently shows Antoine Watson, 19, knocking down Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, in front of his San Francisco home.Officers reportedly discovered Ratanapakdee on a sidewalk and rendered aid before paramedics rushed him to the hospital . One of them, a young organizer, told them about the Asian Americans who had marched beside him last summer and said he grew up with Asian neighbors and lately felt that everything is so separated. Another simply laid his hand over his chest during an impromptu speech and, looking at Monthanus, said, My heart goes out to you., Monthanus hasnt known what to really make of these gestures. And you have to take responsibility for the pain and the suffering you caused.". She worried how the exposure affected her sons. 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. He was the one who encouraged her to go to the United States, the reason she started her life here. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. In each instance, the bystanders appeared to do nothing. A witness told the police they heard a voice shouting, Why you lookin at me? twice before hearing Ratanapakdee, prosecutors said. Owners of gun stores reported more Asian customers than ever before. Breed said that she had the support of both the police department and the District Attorney's office in her stance. In the weeks since it happened, Mr. Vichas death has become a symbol for the vulnerability that many in the Asian-American community feel in this moment. / CBS San Francisco. Antoine Watson, a 19-year-old resident of Daly City, made his first court appearance at the Hall of Justice after being taken into custody . The San Francisco District Attorneys office stated on Monday, February 8, that their detention plan to hold 19-year-old Antoine Watson without bail was granted by the court. 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. Ratanapakdeewas walking in the city's Anza Vista neighborhood on the morning of Jan.28 when he was violently shoved to the ground in whatBoudinreferred to as "a horrific, senseless attack". Monthanus and Eric voted for him. The whole family is in deep agony, Jennifer Steiner, a longtime friend whom Antoines mother chose to speak on her behalf, told me. In another week, her sons would go back to school, and Monthanus, a food-safety inspector for the city school district, would be back at work. The streets were quiet. Send him story tips at lucas.manfredi@fox.com. She had always looked to her father when something troubled her conscience. Sliman Nawabi, a deputy public defender representing Watson, disputed the perception that the attack was racially motivated. In an unprovoked attack, Antoine Watson, 19, charged at Vichar Ratanapakdee, 84, on Thursday during the senior's morning walk. }); Where did the assault happen? "Racism has once again proven deadly" An elderly Thai man was knocked down and killed by a teenager in San Francisco. arrested and chargedwith murder and elder abuse. The hearing was brief and procedural; a trial date has yet to be set. In April, while patrolling San Franciscos Chinatown, a former mayor and son of immigrants from Taishan and Hong Kong pointed to the bank across the street and told me his mother was mugged there a few years ago. A few hours after speaking with the nurse, a doctor called to ask permission to insert a catheter into a vein in his neck and drill a small hole into his skull, to release pressure from bleeding. Two suspects have been arrested. There was no evidence depicted that the elderly man did anything to provoke the attack. The Department of Police stated that they identified Watson quickly. We were like, Is this a hate crime? He was like, I cant talk about this, Eric says. We also identified his female associate as 20-year-old Maylasia Goo also of Daly . https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/us/asian-american-hate-crimes.html. . Watson was arrested along with a female associate he was with at the time of the assault. District Attorney Chesa Boudin Announces the Filing of Charges in Two In the appeal, the family asked residents in San Francisco to contact the local district attorney Chesa Boudin to ensure that Antoine Watson and Ms Maylasia Goo, a 19-year-old woman charged as an accessory to the crime, face the full force of the law for what they describe as a racially motivated hate crime. San Francisco man to stand trial in death of Vicha Ratanapakdee Others have injured or killed people without saying a word. For weeks, Monthanus Ratanapakdee urged her parents to please. They said they didnt have the capacity to track racism, Jeung says. Shortly after Vicha was pronounced dead, Monthanuss phone rang. . Betty Louie, an adviser to the San Francisco Chinatown Merchants Association, remembered that back when she had owned gift shops in the neighborhood, 25 years ago, "we . They have any language to help anybody.. 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. The mainstream media does not spotlight our stories enough, Nguyen said into the camera, urging her vast following to share the story and tag CNN and MSNBC. Now they wanted action. We matter, and racism is killing us. When a video emerged showing a 91-year-old shoved to the ground in Chinatown in Oakland, Calif., the actors Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu posted a $25,000 reward for anyone who had more information on the suspect, tweeting, Remember Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death by two white men in Detroit in 1982. Fatal Attack on Thai Man in San Francisco Fuels #StopAsianHate - The And these memories, the sense of injustice that still lingered in them, overlapped with other histories still. VIDEO: Teen brutally knocks down elder in deadly unprovoked attack I got everything back the house key, even the quarter. Eric fixated on the footage, too. A former public defender, Boudin was part of a new wave of progressive prosecutors who entered office the year before with the promise of reform. A photograph of Vicha Ratanapakdee that hangs in his daughters home.CreditKevin Kunishi for The New York Times. Former President Donald Trump repeatedly described the coronavirus or COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus," a reference to its outbreak from Wuhan, China. The group filed out to the edge of the deck. Family believes attack of 84-year-old man in San Francisco was racial motivated. 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 . The killing of a Thai man in America has given voice to a united community under the umbrella of an Asian-American identity. Video footage shows the teen running at Ratanapakdee and pushing him over, knocking him to the ground. The long impact of the killing of Vicha Ratanapakdee At a vigil in Madison Park in Oakland the week after the Atlanta shootings, a mother stood with her young son, holding a sign with Vichas face on it. SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) - An 84-year-old California man is dead after a seemingly random daylight attack in the Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco, video from ABC 7 News shows. 2023 NFL free agency: One player each team should re-sign } But the legal tampering window opens two days before that on March 13, where teams will be able to negotiate with free agents before the official start of the 2023 season. ga('ads.send', { At Watsons bail hearing, Nawabi said he recognized the racial overtones of the case, but added, 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 confinement, where his family could look after him, along with requiring therapy and counseling, so that Watson wouldnt become another statistic in the criminal-justice world..