Suspect Who Admitted Killing Elderly Asian Man Escapes Murder Conviction in San Francisco
“In San Francisco you can shove an Asian senior citizen to his death, laugh and photograph it, and the jury will not find you guilty of murder. This is where decades of progressive policy has brought us.”
California has been widely mocked and condemned over the last couple of decades or so, thanks in no small part to soft-on-crime policies in its bigger (and bluest) cities that essentially have made it a haven for criminals and repeat offenders to run rampant, and the victim count to get bigger.
During the COVID pandemic, the Asian-American community in particular was subjected to a wave of random violent attacks in California that left some of the victims either permanently injured or dead. Legal Insurrection documented some of the horrific crimes here.
- White Supremacy, Trump Not Connected to Death of Elderly Asian Man in California
- San Francisco: Violent Repeat Offender Given Probation After Brutal Assault of 94-Year-Old Asian Woman
- San Francisco: Asian Commissioner-at-Large Brutally Beaten Outside His Home
- Four Kids Attack, Beat 70-Year-Old Asian Woman in San Francisco Complex
One of them who was killed was 84-year-old Vicha “Grandpa Vicha” Ratanapakdee, a Thai man who was walking in his neighborhood one morning in January 2021 when he was viciously pushed to the ground by a man who ran up to him at an accelerated rate of speed. His head hit the pavement, knocking him unconscious. 48 hours later, he passed away.
The video of the attack is deeply disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised:
Vicha Ratanapakdee was murdered on camera more than four years ago in Gavin Newsom’s lawless California.
In that time the system has only worked to defend “the mental health breakdown of a teenager”
The “teen’s” trial finally begins Monday
https://t.co/Kdb5WM8QvC— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) December 6, 2025
Though the family believed the attack was racially motivated, hate crime charges were not pursued by then-San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was recalled in part over this case, nor by current District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.
During the trial, the suspect, 24-year-old Antoine Watson, admitted he killed Ratanapakdee but basically boiled it down to him having a bad day and randomly picking Grandpa Vicha as a target for his supposed frustrations because he believed Vicha was “judging” him:
Watson testified a week ago that he was in a haze of confusion and anger. He claimed he didn’t know Ratanapakdee was Asian or elderly at the time of the unprovoked attack.
San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Dane Reinstedt began the prosecution’s closing arguments on Tuesday by talking to the jury about the legal definition of murder and why prosecutors argue that’s the charge that fits this crime.
Both sides agreed Watson killed Ratanapakdee. Watson even admitted to it on the stand.
Watson’s attorney, however, argued that it wasn’t a malicious targeting and claimed Watson’s intention was not to kill Ratanapakdee, even though photo evidence was presented showing Watson returning to the scene and standing over the unconscious man a short time later.
Watson never called 911, and he testified on the stand that he didn’t because “I was scared the police might arrest me. I was panicking.”
In court this week, the defendant said he pushed my father and did not call 911. Hearing that was devastating. I hope the jury follows the facts and delivers justice for Vicha Ratanapakdee. @dannoyes https://t.co/OrycDKH5a0 #RememberGrandpaVicha pic.twitter.com/rBiB3quEFP
— Monthanus Ratanapakdee (@ratanapakdee) January 8, 2026
Unfortunately for the Ratanapakdee family, this is San Francisco we’re talking about here, where a defendant who admits to killing someone and who shows no remorse over it can literally get away with what many feel was cold-blooded murder:
A jury did not find Antoine Watson guilty of murder when it returned a verdict Thursday for the January 2021 attack on 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee. Jurors found Watson guilty on the lesser charges of involuntary manslaughter and assault.
The office of San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins declined to comment, saying that the jury was still empaneled. Jurors will return Jan. 26 to hear arguments on aggravating factors and sentencing will be scheduled once that is completed, the office said in an email.
They didn’t even find him guilty of elder abuse.
As for the sentencing phase, here is how that breaks down:
The jury is scheduled to return to the courtroom on Jan. 26 to decide on an issue related to aggravating factors in the case, then the judge will determine sentencing.
Antoine Watson faces up to four years in prison for the assault and four years for the manslaughter. Additionally, the jury found two additional sentence enhancements to be true: that Watson rendered victim Vicha Ratanapakdee comatose and that Ratanapakdee was more than 70 years old, which would add an additional consecutive prison term of five years. Each of the four aggravating factors, which include that Ratanapakdee was “particularly vulnerable,” could result in another year added to the sentence.
This is a massive failure of justice. Involuntary manslaughter? We all saw the video. Nobody made Antione Watson do it. Nothing involuntary about it. It was a sickening act of hatred and violence. Justice has not been served. https://t.co/pVBxF5Zf0B
— Stephen Martin-Pinto (@StephenMPinto) January 16, 2026
A man runs across the street, shoves an 84-year-old to the ground, photographs his unconscious body, doesn’t call 911, and the victim dies. Verdict: involuntary manslaughter. In San Francisco, ‘I was having a bad day’ is now a defense for killing the elderly.
RIP Grandpa Vicha https://t.co/pN66LgBNgh pic.twitter.com/0LtjUkR5nV
— Garry Tan (@garrytan) January 16, 2026
In San Francisco you can shove an Asian senior citizen to his death, laugh and photograph it, and the jury will not find you guilty of murder.
This is where decades of progressive policy has brought us. https://t.co/FaDDNNpH9G pic.twitter.com/a3SyAAYt5L
— Kane 謝凱堯 (@kane) January 16, 2026
Infuriating.
– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –
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Comments
I think the defense to the hate crime is that the defendant thought the victim was white.
Or just didn’t pay attention to what race he was. Or he did notice but didn’t care. If he would have hit the first person he saw, then it’s not a hate crime.
Which is why “hate crimes” laws are so abhorrent. It doesn’t treat the same act equally, based on motive. Just laws treat the act itself, regardless of motive.
Also, random acts of violence are worse than targeted acts, IMO.
That is just not true. In the entire history of our legal system, motive has always been a legitimate factor in sentencing.
NUTS
Yes, you are.
thats just it
b/c the prevailing thinking is that blks cant be racist..then they are given special treatment against this law being invoked against them based on a political stance as opposed to the commonsense approach of…the victim was of a different race therefor the hate crime law ( a bad law,imo) is attached automatically to the suspect
whether it was the fist *known* victim of the attacker ,, or not the first known victim…which means the number of victims shouldnt even be in play in a particular incident
the law is written to cover all bases but , again, is then allowed to be discretionary so that it then falls into the political leanings of the “justice” system
yeah,, blcks are in fact charged with hate crimes and whether or not that charge actually sticks is a whole other story
That is an outright lie. For as long as we’ve had hate crime laws, they have been applied against black people just as readily as against white ones.
That is not a “commonsense approach”, and it has never been applied that way, regardless of which races are involved. Especially since Apprendi, which is more than 25 years ago, and which requires a specific jury finding that the motive was hatred.
It’s no more discretionary than any other prosecutorial decision, including whether to bring charges in the first place.
No, it isn’t.
So it was just a mere murder, and not a vicious, depraved “hate crime.”
Seems fair enough to me.
🤮
I despise the whole notion of hate crimes. A crime is a crime whether you hate someone’s race or whatever or not. This low life murdered someone because he was having a bad day. No defense for it at all. I’m not sure what he should be charged with. It was definitely not involuntary and he should be removed from the public for a good long time.
No one disputes that. But motive is relevant in sentencing. There has never been a time when that wasn’t the case. Hate crime laws merely formalize that particular factor, both requiring judges to take it into account, but also requiring the motive to be found by a jury based on the evidence, rather than letting the judge just assert that it was the motive, as was historically the case.
And California continues to circle the inside of the bowl.
.
Get out of Marxist Hell holes while you can.
That’s not what involuntary manslaughter means. No one suggested that someone forced him to do it. Involuntary simply means that he didn’t mean to kill him. The victim died without the assailant intending that to happen. Causing someone’s death through criminal negligence is involuntary manslaughter.
Voluntary manslaughter means the assailant meant for the victim to die, but there are mitigating circumstances that make it not rise to actual murder. For instance imperfect self-defense leads to a charge of voluntary manslaughter.
I think you’re wrong on this one, Mihouse.
I’m pretty certain “involuntary” means the person didn’t intend to commit the ACT, not just that there was no intent to kill. It would be when you drive incredibly recklessly and don’t intend to hit the other car (but do, because you’re driving so recklessly) and someone dies from it.
Voluntary manslaughter means you fully intended to commit the act which happened to kill someone, although your intent was not murder.
The “manslaughter” part means they didn’t intend to kill. The voluntary/involuntary part is whether you intended to commit the act.
BTW, I think there are jurisdictions where intent to commit grave bodily harm moves it to murder. “I wanted to gouge his eye out” gets you the murder rap when the victim dies. I could be wrong on that.
This is my understanding as well. But dont’ worry, if we are wrong, Milly will be back to tell us just how wrong we are about it…angrily.
Here’s the law out of California:
Obviously vehicular homicide was not on the table.
“Voluntary manslaughter” may have been if and only if the state could prove that Watson was in the heat of passion as there was no quarrel between the two men. Watson’s statement that he was angry and having a “bad day” would preclude the “heat of passion” charge. Even if one agrees Watson was angry at the man judging him, his statement was he was angry all day.
You cannot make the case that the shoving of the man by Watson was a “legal act” that went wrong, so the second half of “involuntary manslaughter” doesn’t apply. That leaves “in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a felony.
Watson was convicted of “assault,” which is not a felony. Interestingly, “battery” can be a felony if there is great bodily harm (aggravated battery.) Why the state didn’t charge “aggravated battery” is a mystery. Doing so and proving “aggravated battery” would have precluded “involuntary manslaughter.”
Then there are the jury instructions which also bring in “intent”:
It is somewhat difficult to say that death as a result of being pushed to the ground was foreseeable and natural consequence.
The jury instructions for “involuntary manslaughter” are:
The law requires “malice” (intent) to kill. The jury instructions are that intent to kill matters.
Where I live it is cold today. We has snow and temps falling. I just didn’t realize that it was so cold that hell froze over and I agree with Millhouse.
The Difference Between Voluntary and Involuntary Manslaughter:
You have no idea what the perp intended and what he says frankly is irrelevant. He voluntarily initiated an act. Done and done as far as I’m concerned.
That does not make it voluntary manslaughter.
Neither you nor I know what he intended, but the onus was on the prosecutor to prove his intentions to the jury. The jury considered the evidence and decided it was not convinced that he intended to kill the victim. That automatically makes the manslaughter involuntary rather than voluntary. That he voluntarily initiated the act is simply irrelevant.
Humans are the most violent species on the planet and it’s not even a close contest. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time and you risk having that person rip your face clean off your skull.
So if the progressive left insists upon giving feral degenerates such as this a pass for killing a defenseless and elderly man then don’t be surprised when society takes back the role of meting out justice.
This^^^
Hoping an Asian prison gang makes sure this animal leaves prison in a body bag.
The current justice system is a dangerous joke. We are safer using frontier justice. perfect your quick draw……
The justice system is a joke.
And these are precisely the sorts of people Adams said could not live free under the Constitution. And this is exactly why.
Antione thought he might have been dissed. You combine that with the fact he reports having had a bad day then you have the makings of an irresistible impulse defense. Antione is a soldier against racism, and the only fair verdict is Not Guilty of all charges. The verdict handed down was a cop out that screams for a gubernatorial pardon.
nice sarc
Good grief!
While I believethe proverbial book should’ve been thrown at the attacker, it may have been a missed opportunity to revisit the whole idea of a “hate crime”.
I’m all for hanging high (truly, and not metaphorically) the Wes Hardin and Jesse James wannabes who’d shoot a black man (or whatever “other” you can think of) simply for being black. But, could someone please explain for me what a “love crime” or a “simple respect crime” would look like? If you love your neighbor (I am a Christian), or just show simple respect, are you going to kill, rob, slander, or assault him?
BTW, I agree with all the other posters who day that the attack on Vichai Ratanapakdee looked to deliberate to be manslaughter. And, having had plenty of “bad days” myself, I don’t think that’s a good excuse or mitigating circumstance.
Further, I am also of the mind that the WuFlu did come from a leak in that Wuhan lab (I don’t blame wet markets; shopped in too many myself back in the day with no ill effect). I also have Far Eastern family connections. I also fully recognize that criminality seems to disproportionately affect the black and Latin communities. But I’m not going to randomly attack some random black or Latin over it; nor am I going to call for expunging them or anyone else from American society. My only conclusion is that I’m not going to live in SanFran.
No, it wasn’t. No one involved in this case had the power to revisit that. Only the legislature can do that.
Irrelevant. The alternative to a crime motivated by hatred of a class of people to which the criminal perceived his victim to belong, is simply the same crime motivated by anything else.
Most crimes are motivated by something other than hatred. Avarice is a common motive, e.g. for robbery. Anger at something the victim has said or done is another. In most cases the criminal would have committed the crime regardless of his victim’s identity. Crimes committed because of who the victim is are a significant minority, but definitely a minority.
too deliberate
At this point the guy’s family should just kill the scumbag who murdered gramps. Take him out and feed him to a bunch of hungry hogs… film it and post it on youjube.
You’re defeating the 3rd ‘S’ using social media.
Doesn’t make a good warning to the rest of the animals if you don’t SHOW them.
It’s why if you want to dissuade Robin’s from eating your grapes on the vine. you shoot some and hang the carcasses in the vineyard
The other birds stop coming once they see the consequences of eating your fruit.
I mean they did just have a bad day with the verdict. They can apparently claim oopsies now and get off with a relative slap on the wrist.
watson is one of their soldiers
he can be released either by the upcoming netflix/kardashian plea
or the prison revolt that a local city council will take a vote on an decide to release the inmates b/c the victims are dead so
what does it matta,, now
he is a soldier
The lives of the innocent are not worth anything to the vile, stupid and evil Dhimmi-crat neo-communists/”progressives”/”liberals”/”Democratic Socialists”/Islamofascists/Muslim supremacists.
thats the bottom line
yet they somehow keep getting put in charge
We really need to reassess our criminal justice system. I’d argue for:
1st degree Murder should be a premeditated act that causes or was an act that is reasonably foreseeable as causing death.
Assassination, hire a hit man, possess a weapon in commission of another crime. I’d also argue that residential property crimes within the interior or curtilage of the home should qualify when a death occurs. (Not on the homeowner/resident/guests but the people who came onto the property/remained on the property uninvited and commit any other other crime).
2nd degree murder should be for a case like this one where the goal wasn’t death but an attack took place and a death occurred. If three people are committing armed robbery at a liquor store and the owner lawfully defends himself killing one of them then the two accomplices should face 2nd degree murder. If the robbers kill the owner, clerk or customer then it would be 1st degree murder.
Manslaughter should be for accidents which had a foreseeable outcome of injury/death and a death occurred. DUI and hit a pedestrian or auto accident when driving 25+ MPH over the speed limit and a death occurred.
Involuntary Manslaughter should be more like ‘death by misadventure’. You didn’t mean to kill or harm but the reckless disregard inherent within the action led to a death but it was lesser degree than Manslaughter.
The problem here is a failure of the jury not the law code IMO.
Yes and no. The other problem IMO is DA who over charge/under charge. There should be one charge coming out of the grand jury, no lesser included offense as options. This keeps DA and the Jury more ‘honest’ in that the charge is the charge so if the DA can’t prove with evidence or the jury chooses not guilty then that’s it. IOW with a choice of guilty or turn him loose then there’s no wiggle room to hide behind for the DA or the Jury.
I can’t believe the jury bought that bullshit. This was during the time period when black people were regularly attacking Asian people.
The fatigue is real…
Time for some good citizen to dispatch the perp, with extreme prejudice.
If one can get away with murder in SF there’s an obvious solution in my mind…
It’s about time we understand that there is always a non-zero chance of the jury system completely failing to deliver so long as the accused is a black person. No other denomination enjoys as much benefit of the doubt on a societal scale. Jurors refuse to convict on racial lines. It’s not even just solidarity, it’s ideologically captured (usually white) people as well.
Goodness is losing.
Did you hit your head? Or is the difference that you don’t have a space in your screen name?
Why do you think you have to agree with everything I say? I thought we were all old enough to understand things like nuance
You are a known troll.
from day 1 thats been true
and thats why they want equality justice ( and are getting that vs equality)
societies never work well under anything but capitalism so their tribalism taking the lead is suffocating civility
correction:
thats why they want EQUITY and not equality
the hate crime law was and is just another dig into the wht mans sense of fair play changing it into an
equity play vs equality play
which feeds into the self hate of lefty being projected onto those of us who love ourselves
“Teen” had me make an educated guess. The name “Antoine”, given the spelling pushed that educated guest further. Seeing his picture confirmed everything.
Knowing San Francisco, that’s why he didn’t get to get murderer verdict.
Why did spelling the name correctly push your guess further? I would have thought it would move your guess in the other direction, since people of the kind you were contemplating usually misspell it.
Me and my wife were born in CA in the late 50s. Our two sons in the 80s. We left in 96 due to business. I was a juror on a murder trial in the 80s and it was clear that the person that killed the man in a burglary and did an attempted murder of the witness we found guilty of 1st degree murder and attempted murder. The Judge made the sentence without us the following week of Life in Prison. It is sad to see how bad the Justice System of the US and especially California has gone to.
The difference between murder and manslaughter in california is a kind of fine line. If you commit a violent act that you know could kill someone it is second degree murder. If you did not intend to kill them or did not know what you were doing could kill them then it can be involuntary manslaughter. So if the defense convinces the jury, he did not know the guy was elderly and what he did would not kill a middle aged adult male and he just wanted to hit the guy not kill him well that is involuntary manslaughter. The jury could not believe all that and decide it was obvious the guy was elderly and you knew body slamming someone elderly like that has a chance of killing them and find him guilty of murder but this is San Francisco and the victim was asian and the perpetrator was black so they are going to give him benefit of the doubt.
In Alabama we still have legal presumptions about the elderly, the disabled and Women and Children that not only enhance sentence but elevate the criminal act. Not sure if CA does, some States retain them some didn’t. Here it doesn’t matter if you know only that the act was committed against one of those categories.
More black on asian violence? SF progressives blame whites. BLM is smiling.
Dear Asians
We would stand with you against this if you would join us.
Some of us just don’t like lawlessness, ragardless of who is being targeted.
Asian community needs to start rumors among the criminals about the wealth of the gated rich areas being easy pickings.
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