Verdict nears in murder that ignited stop Asian hate outrage

By Aneela Mirchandani

A murder case that has been five years in the making, and over a month at trial, reached its culmination at the Superior Court of San Francisco today. Prosecutors laid out their best case against Daly City resident Antoine Watson — who, in 2021, shoved 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee to his death in the Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco. Watson was 19 at the time. 

“On the morning of January 28,” prosecutor Dane Reinstedt said in the closing argument as members of the jury listened intently, “Antoine Watson was angry because his car wouldn’t start. In Mr. Ratanapakdee, he found a target for his anger.”

The jury is being asked to provide a verdict on three charges: murder, inflicting injury on an elder, and assault.

The incident, coming as it did at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, galvanized San Francisco’s Stop Asian Hate movement. However, Watson was never charged with a hate crime — given that Ratanapakdee’s face was covered with a baseball cap and a face mask. Prosecutors have said it would be difficult to prove anti-Asian animus. Despite this, the victim’s daughter and son-in-law, both of whom were present in the courtroom this morning, still see it as a lapse in accountability.

Reinstedt went over the elements of the charges in great detail, explaining to the jury that in order to find “implied malice,” they would have to find that Watson acted with a “conscious disregard for human life.”

The first part of the prosecution’s case focused on Watson’s behavior in the seconds prior to his fatal shove of Ratanapakdee. 

Multiple witnesses in the neighborhood have testified that they heard Watson yelling “What the f*ck are you looking at” as he sprinted downhill on Anza Vista Ave. towards the intersection with Fortuna Ave., where the victim stood. He has testified that at that moment, he felt like Ratanapakdee was judging him. 

“Watson has said that he was screaming wildly at the sky,” Reinstedt said, ridiculing the fact that Watson has not admitted to having directed his yell at the victim specifically. “But the ‘YOU’ implies there was somebody he was yelling at.”

Watson’s 18-mile-an-hour sprint down the hill towards Ratanapakdee showed his intention to cause harm, the prosecutor said. 

The details of the injury to the victim were graphic. His body was briefly airborne, and upon hitting the concrete, the brain ricochetted inside the skull case. The jury was shown stills of his head lying in a pool of blood. The blow caused the 84-year-old to fall into a coma and require intubation. 

Prior to the incident, Watson and his then girlfriend Malaysia Goo had been parked up the hill on Anza Vista in his silver BMW, where they spent the night. Watson had had a traffic encounter with the police after crashing his car the night before a couple miles away.

That morning, the car would no longer start. Prosecutors believe that caused Watson to become distressed and angry. As he got out of the car to pace and attempt to lift the hood, the corner of Fortuna was just 150 feet away. This is where Ratanapakdee stood on his morning walk. Watson’s head, the prosecutor said, “snapped” towards the victim, as seen in security camera footage. 

Watson has consistently denied having noticed Ratanapakdee until coming down to the corner. The jury will have to decide which side makes the better argument. 

After the incident, Watson walked back to his car, and came back twice to examine the victim as he lay prone. He did not call 911.

Reinstedt also made much of Watson’s actions after leaving the scene: the attempted cover-up, the prosecutor said. Watson’s Plan A was to escape accountability by never admitting to the crime. They made this case by playing recordings of jail calls with family for the jury, showing attempts to speak in code. They also brought up what they laid out as Watson’s deliberate disposal of the clothes he wore. They also alleged he told his family where to find his phone and then arranged to have them come retrieve it.

Footage from the traffic stop earlier in the night made Plan A untenable, Reinstedt said. 

The prosecution carefully telegraphed the case the defense would make: raising sympathy about Watson’s difficult family life and “very bad day,” which they called “Plan B.” 

However, the prosecution claims that these attempts to raise the jury’s sympathy are exaggerated — Watson was not “crying hysterically,” as his mother has testified, nor was he out of his mind. Watson was “cool, calm, collected, and showed rational purpose,” Reinstedt said, recounting a number of rational choices he made for the two days prior to being arrested by police, which included never returning home. 

The prosecution rested their case a little after the lunch break. 

“The prosecutors did a fantastic job,” said Eric Lawson, son-in-law of the victim, speaking to reporters during the lunch break. 

However, Lawson said that the family of the victim is unhappy that some bits of incriminating evidence were not admitted by the judge Linda Colfax. This includes the defendant’s juvenile records, and some crucial seconds of the footage after the attack, when, in Lawson’s opinion, Watson appears celebratory. 

“This is an activist judge,” Lawson said. “It makes me so angry.” He expects to support the judge’s opponent when she comes up for reelection four years down the road. 

When asked if the family would ever be able to forgive Watson for his fatal shoving attack of the beloved 84-year-old known as “Grandpa Vicha” in the neighborhood, Lawson demurred. “Maybe in 20 years, depending on his actions during that time,” he said. 

The defense is expected to complete closing arguments tomorrow.