His name was Vicha Ratanapakdee and back in January of 2021 the 84-year-old was out walking when he was shoved to the ground by a stranger. He died of his injuries. His assailant was arrested and identified as 19-year-old Antoine Watson. The whole incident was caught on video:
LATEST: Horrific video of fatal attack Thursday on 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee. Details -> https://t.co/6Z5rqIQpcZ pic.twitter.com/PJnuuWgE3Y
— Evan Sernoffsky (@EvanSernoffsky) February 1, 2021
What we still don’t know to this day is why this happened. That’s because despite the passage of nearly three full years, Antoine Watson still hasn’t been tried for the murder. His public defender tried to get the charge knocked down to manslaughter but the ADA refused to go along with it. When I wrote about the case more than six months ago, prosecutors were saying the long delay was part of a defense strategy.
[Ratanapakdee’s daughter] Monthanus believes the defense is using a tactic of running out the clock, trying to make witnesses’ memories fade with time. Prosecutors concur, placing responsibility for the delays squarely on Watson’s legal team.
“We continue to stand with Grandpa Vicha’s family in the pursuit of justice in this case,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told The Standard. “In this case, the defense has continued to choose not to set the case for trial.”
Today, as we’re about to hit the three year mark, there was an update of sorts. The defense attorney said the case was too complicated to move any quicker:
“It requires scheduling several weeks of uninterrupted courtroom time for the trial, reviewing thousands of pages of discovery, and scheduling experts who are often in great demand,” the statement said.
Really? Three years isn’t long enough to handle a murder caught on video? Apparently not because the update on Vicha Ratanapakdee’s case came bundled with the story of another victim whose trial has been pending for even longer. Her name was Yik Oi Huang and way back in January 2019 she was severely beaten by an 18-year-old named Keonte Gathron. She lived for one year before complications from her injuries led to her death:
According to court records, police responded to a call on the morning of Jan. 8, 2019, and found Huang unconscious in a sandbox at the park. She was bleeding heavily from numerous injuries to her head. Police discovered a pool of blood near the playground’s entrance, along with a black glove and a bloody napkin, records show…
Gathron, now 23, was charged with a long list of crimes by then-District Attorney George Gascón, including attempted murder. Gathron was accused of committing a crime spree between Jan. 4 and 19 before his arrest, including multiple robberies and a carjacking. Of the seven victims in total, five were Asian, court records show.
After Huang died in 2020, the medical examiner ruled her death a homicide, with the specific cause of death listed as complications of multiple blunt force injuries. Soon, then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin changed Gathron’s attempted murder charge to murder.
Even George Gascon and Chesa Boudin understood this case needed to be treated as a murder and yet four years after Huang’s death, there’s been no trial. That statement I quoted above was actually a joint statement released by the public defenders for both Keonte Gathron and Antoine Watson. For the record, I believe Brooke Jenkins, the current DA, is not the person behind the delays, though I think she should be making a constant stink about these cases until the defense changes strategies.
It’s difficult to overlook the obvious racial element here. Both victims were elderly and Asian and both attackers were young and black. Given the general tenor of criminal justice in San Francisco, maybe it’s not surprising that public defenders are trying to run out the clock in these cases. But the old saying that justice delayed is justice denied has some truth to it. Public defenders shouldn’t be allowed to try and game the system to this degree just because their sense of social equity calls for it. Gathron and Watson should be tried and sentenced ASAP. The families of the victims have waited long enough for justice.