Social media users rally to honour San Francisco senior pushed to his death

Vicha Ratanapakdee is seen in this undated photo (GoFundMe)

TORONTO — People are changing their profile pictures on social media to honour a San Francisco senior who died after being shoved to the ground in what his family alleges was a racially-motivated attack.

Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, died on Jan. 31 at San Francisco General Hospital “from injuries sustained while on his morning walk in the Anza Vista neighbourhood” a few days earlier, according to the GoFundMe organized by family member Eric Lawson.

Lawson describes Ratanapakdee as originally from Thailand, and a “nearly blind, gentle person, beloved by his family,” who was “violently taken from them.”

“Our family has endured multiple verbal anti-Asian attacks since the beginning of the pandemic...this time it was fatal. Racism has once again proven deadly. Anti-Asian racism has become a very serious danger to all Asian Americans, particularly in San Francisco,” Lawson wrote.

The San Francisco District Attorney has filed murder charges and elder abuse causing death charges against the 19-year-old suspect in the case, Antoine Watson, calling the crime a “brutal homicide.”

The charges against Watson have not been proven in court. Local media reports said he pleaded not guilty during his first court appearance.

In a surveillance video showing the attack, a man can be seen running in from the right side of the frame and shoving Ratanapakdee violently to the ground, where the senior remains prone. The man then appears to calmly walk away.

“On January 28, at around 8:30 a.m. 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee was violently, abruptly attacked by a man in the Anza Vista neighbourhood,” the District Attorney’s release states.

“The murder of Mr. Ratanapakdee… has been especially painful to the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community which has been victimized by many incidents of violence, hate and racism since the start of the pandemic,” the release continues, with District Attorney Chesa Boudin describing it as a “horrific, senseless” attack.

Los Angeles-based illustrator Jonathan D. Chang paid tribute to Ratanapakdee with a stylized portrait on Monday, writing in the Instagram post about his “condolences to the family,” and his hope that “justice will be served.”

“After I saw the video, I was expressing to (my friend Sarah) how frustrated I was that this would be another attack on an Asian American being swept under the rug,” Chang wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca.

“She gave me the idea to make a sketch of him to put a face to the incident to help raise awareness of how terrible and rampant the anti-Asian crimes have been.”

In response, social media users have been changing their profile pictures to Chang’s portrait of Ratanapakdee in a show of solidarity.

“People like Mr. Ratanapakdee should be taking it easy and enjoying the rest of their life at their old age, not getting murdered in the street for no reason,” Chang wrote. “There have been so many attacks on the Asian American elderly and outside of Asian-centric social media pages, they go unreported.”

“If we don't show that we care about injustices that happen to our own community, why would anyone else care?”

A message attributed to Ratanapakdee’s daughter on the GoFundMe page said “there are no words we can describe how our family feels in this overwhelming loss, our father going out for his morning walk after his daily routine of preparing his young grandsons for their day, after just surviving his recent heart surgery, and then ever coming back to our family ever again….so senseless this is [sic].”

The GoFundMe has raised more than US$35,000 for the family to cover funeral arrangements.