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San Fran teen who killed elderly man during ‘temper tantrum’ acquitted on 1st and 2nd degree murder

January 16, 2026 | | Print Article

A young 24-year-old hooligan has been convicted of only involuntary manslaughter and assault despite his actions leading to the death of an elderly man.

Five years ago, in January of 2021, Antoine Watson rushed up to Thai immigrant Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, and pushed him hard, causing him to slam into the concrete ground in San Francisco.

Ratanapakdee subsequently died.

On Thursday, a Bay Area jury acquitted Watson of murder and elder abuse. Instead, the jury of San Francisco left-wingers convicted him of only involuntary manslaughter and assault, two very minor charges.

The only “good news” is that Watson could still possibly face a potential prison sentence, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Watson faces up to four years in prison for the assault and four years for the manslaughter,” the outlet notes.

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In addition, 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.”

This sentence enhancement “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,” according to the Chronicle.

Still, this is far short of the potential life sentence he could have justifiably been hit with had he been convicted of murder.

Plus, knowing how lenient San Francisco judges tend to be, it’s very well possible that he’ll get zero time:

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The prosecutor in the case previously alleged that Watson had appeared to celebrate after knocking Ratanapakdee down — and that, worse, he’d left the scene and then returned shortly later to take photos of the dying man, as reported by station KGO.

Despite all this evidence and the racial makeup of the victim, the prosecution declined to pursue hate crime charges against Watson.

Then, in February of 2021, then-San Francisco District Attorney Boudin made a statement to The New York Times in which he suggested that Watson had simply had “some sort of a temper tantrum.”

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Meanwhile, during a jury trial, Watson’s attorney, Sliman Nawabi, alleged that Watson hadn’t intended to kill Ratanapakdee.

According to The Voice of San Francisco, Nawabi argued that Watson had committed an “impulsive, unmotivated assault” as a result of “the mental-health breakdown of a teenager.”

“This false narrative that this is a targeted attack on the Asian community, or an elderly man, is misleading and prejudicial,” Nawabi reportedly said in court.

The victim’s family strongly disagrees.

“The Ratanapakdee family has maintained from the beginning that they believed Watson targeted Ratanapakdee because he was Asian,” the Chronicle notes. “Ratanapakdee’s daughter, Monthanus, said she did not think Watson would have attacked him if he was a ‘tall Black or white man.'”

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The jury’s decision has prompted massive outrage, given the horrifying circumstances surrounding Ratanapakdee’s death.

“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,” one critic tweeted. “This is where decades of progressive policy has brought us.”

Vivek Saxena
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