SAN FRANCISCO – Vicha Ratanapakdee was tired of being caged during the pandemic and was impatient for his regular morning walk. He washed his face, put on a baseball cap and face mask and told his wife that he would drink the coffee she had prepared for him. Then, on a fast and foggy winter morning in Northern California, he stepped outside.
About an hour later, Mr. Vicha, an 84-year-old retired auditor from Thailand, was violently knocked to the ground by a man who charged him at full speed. It was the kind of powerful body blow that struck a young soccer player unconscious in full protective pillows. For mr. Vicha, who stood 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed 113 pounds, was fatally attacked. He died two days later of a brain haemorrhage in a San Francisco hospital.
The video of the attack was captured on a security camera of a neighbor and watched in horror around the world. Among Asian Americans, many of whom experienced racist taunts, outbursts and worse during the coronavirus pandemic, the murder of a defenseless elderly man has become a rally.
In recent years, researchers and activist groups have discussed thousands of racist incidents against Asian Americans, an increase in hatred that binds them to former President Donald J. Trump who repeatedly referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus.” The family of mr. Vicha described his murder as racially motivated, and it sparked a campaign to raise awareness among many prominent Asian Americans, who used the online hashtags #JusticeForVicha and #StopAsianHate.
“The murder of Vicha was as simple as the day,” said Will Lex Ham, an actor in New York. He flew after watching the video from New York to San Francisco to lead protests and security patrols in Asian neighborhoods. “There was no way to ignore the violence with people who look like us.”
Antoine Watson, a 19-year-old resident of neighboring Daly City, was arrested two days after the attack and charged with murder and ill-treatment of older men. He pleaded not guilty, but his lawyer admitted that his client had an “outburst of anger”.
Chesa Boudin, the district attorney in San Francisco, says the death of Mr. Vicha was horrible. But he says there is no evidence to suggest that it was motivated by racial animus.
At a time when claims for racial justice shocked a demographically developing nation, the assassination of Mr. Vicha noted for the galvanizing rage it brought to a diverse group that included people of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, South Asian and Southeast Asian peoples. heritage. The murder of a Thai man in America gave voice to a united community under the umbrella of an Asian-American identity.
In the weeks since that happened, Mr. Vicha’s death has become a symbol of the vulnerability that many in the Asian-American community are experiencing at the moment.
For his family, death in California and abroad was devastating. In Thailand, the murder was news on the front page and described as barbaric, a life shortened in a family where siblings usually live until the late 90s, family members say.
Since retiring from Kasikornbank, one of Thailand’s largest financial institutions, in 1996, Mr. Vicha traveled between San Francisco, where her eldest daughter lives, and Thailand, where her youngest lives.
Mr. Vicha returned to Thailand for months but could not because of the pandemic. He does not like the cold and wet San Francisco winter and misses his favorite South Thai dishes and his extended family and friends.
His brother, Surachai Ratanapakdee (89), now the only surviving brother or sister of eight children, said Mr. Vicha remembers as curious and inquisitive about the world outside the rice paddies, watermelon fields and orchards of the family farm.
“Vicha was one of the few people in town who could speak English well,” he said. Surachai said.
Mr. Vicha is studying at Thammasat University in Bangkok, one of the country’s most prestigious institutions.
His older daughter, Monthanus, describes her father as a devout Buddhist. She remains amazed why he left without his Buddhist amulet on the morning of the attack, a talisman of protection he always wore around his neck.
Then Mrs. Monthanus two decades ago expressed her desire to go to graduate school, Mr. Vicha supports her decision to enroll in a business school at the University of California, Berkeley. After her studies, when me. Monthanus married and decided to stay in San Francisco, Mr. Vicha and his wife help raise their grandchildren.
At the time of the attack, Mr. Vicha only months away from returning to Thailand. On January 15, he receives the first shot of the Moderna vaccine.
“We said, ‘Dad, we’ll be back soon!’ ‘It’s Mrs. Monthanus remembers.
Vicha’s second shot was scheduled for February 12, an appointment he would not want to make.
His murder came at a time when other disturbing images and reports from across San Francisco Bay were emerging. Three days later, an assailant threw a 91-year-old man on the ground in Chinatown, Oakland, another video that appeared on the Internet.
That older victim was mistakenly described in many news accounts as Asians. In the court documents, the victim’s name is mentioned as Gilbert Diaz, and Carl Chan, a community leader and president of the Chamber of Commerce in Oakland, said the victim was Latino. But Mr. Chan says he has amassed more than two dozen assaults against Asian-American victims in Chinatown, including two other people killed by the attacker who killed Mr. Chan. Diaz was thrown down, stomped.
Crime data from San Francisco County and Alameda County District Attorneys’ Offices, which include Oakland, show that people of Asian descent were less likely to be victims of crime last year than other ethnic groups. In San Francisco, where 36 percent of the population is of Asian descent, 16 percent of the crime victims of well-known ethnicity were Asians, a situation similar to Alameda County.
But leaders of the Bay Area Asian community say crime statistics are misleading because Asian and American residents, especially immigrants, often do not report assaults or robberies due to mistrust in the system or language barriers. What is indisputable, say leaders of the Asian-American community nationwide, is that the pandemic created a climate of fear and a sense of insecurity from New York to California. Last week, the California legislature approved $ 1.4 million for the detection and investigation of racist incidents against Asian Americans.
“Our seniors are afraid to walk in their own streets,” he said. Chan said.
Last year, Mrs. Monthanus, mnr. Vicha’s daughter, twice on the street, was charged by people who told her to leave the country because the attackers said that Asians caused the coronavirus.
Mr. Watson’s lawyer, Sliman Nawabi, a public defender, said his client would not be able to sue Mr. Vicha’s ethnicity by not wearing his face mask, cap and winter clothes. Mr. Nawabi called Mr. Watson describes as someone who struggled with anger.
In the hours before the attack, Mr. Watson had a series of setbacks. He left his home due to a family dispute and was involved in a traffic accident in San Francisco at 2 p.m. He was quoted by San Francisco police as driving a stop sign and reckless driving and then slept in his car that night.
That morning, a number of security cameras in the area Mr. Watson caught with a car with his hand, according to Mr. Boudin, District Attorney.
“It appears that the accused was in a kind of temper tantrums,” he said. Boudin said.
It was then that Mr. Vicha in Anzavista Avenue, a street overlooking skyscrapers in the city’s financial district.
A witness told police officers that Mr. Watson said something like, “What are you looking at?” A security camera in a neighbor’s apartment showed Mr. Watson captured across the sidewalk in the direction of Mr. Vicha, who turned to his attacker shortly before the attack.
Two days after the attack, Ms. Monthanus and her mother went to the place where Mr. Vicha was killed and saw that his blood was still staining the sidewalk. They scrubbed the sidewalk with brushes and wondered why no one from the city came to do the same.
Mr. Vicha’s cremated remains were placed in two hours. Mrs. Monthanus says she and her family will rent a boat under the Golden Gate Bridge and scatter some in the Pacific.
“I want him to be near me,” she said. “If we go to the beach, we can dream that he is with us.”
She plans to bring the other urn back to her father’s hometown in southern Thailand, where the local Buddhist temple contains a stupa containing the remains of the family. “His brothers and sisters are there,” said Mrs. Monthanus said. “They will all be together.”
The amulet, a precious heirloom for the family, will be passed on to the next generation, said me. Monthanus said.
“He always told me that if something happened to him, it should be passed on to grandchildren,” she said.
Poypiti Amatatham reporting from Bangkok contributed.