The Sunday Read: ‘Why Was Vicha Ratanapakdee Killed?’

[0] On January 28, 2021, Vicha Ratanapakti set out for his usual morning walk.

[1] Vichita was 84, from Thailand, but he'd moved to San Francisco to be closer to his daughter and her family.

[2] Security camera footage showed Vicha pausing near someone's driveway.

[3] Suddenly, another much taller man ran toward him and slammed him to the ground, hard.

[4] Vita died in the hospital two days later.

[5] My name's J .A. Lee, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times Magazine.

[6] Like many people, I first came across Vicha's story by watching the security camera footage.

[7] It went viral on social media.

[8] That same week, there had been a cluster of attacks against Asian elders, and Vicha quickly became a symbol of the violence against Asian Americans that appeared to be on the rise.

[9] When I finally spoke to Vicha's family, they kept coming back to, why?

[10] Why did this happen to their father?

[11] to someone they loved so much.

[12] The answers didn't come easy.

[13] Eventually, we learned that there were no known explicit expressions of racism when Vichita was shoved to the ground that morning.

[14] No obvious hateful slurs, no references to the coronavirus or to China.

[15] And because the person accused of killing Vicha was a young black man, it brought up racial tensions that had been simmering for decades.

[16] Even within Asian American communities, everyone agreed the violence needed to stop.

[17] But how to get there and what justice would even look like, that's where things got complicated.

[18] So here's my story.

[19] Why was Vicha Ratanapakti killed?

[20] Read by Emily Wu Zeller.

[21] This was recorded by Autumn.

[22] Autumn is an app you can download to listen to lots of audio stories from publications such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and the Atlantic.

[23] For weeks, Montanas Ratanapak.

[24] urged her parents to please stay inside.

[25] An uneasiness had hung over her ever since a mob descended on the capital early that month, though really people had been acting crazy for a year.

[26] Throughout 2020, multiple strangers had come at her seemingly out of nowhere.

[27] That January, an old man yelled at her in Golden Gate Park, something about a virus and going back to her country, while she watched her sons, then ten and seven run in a playground.

[28] In February, two joggers, women, yelled something about germs at her older son as he played on a dock with a friend.

[29] In March, just before the country went into lockdown, a woman swung at Montanis outside a hospital.

[30] She ducked the punch before running across the street.

[31] In November, another old man spat in her direction as her sons rode their scooters by the bay.

[32] When Montanus talked about these incidents, how the outside world didn't feel safe anymore.

[33] Her father would ask, is it really that bad?

[34] A petite 84 -year -old with soft white hair, Wicha Ratanapakti was a lifelong Buddhist, the kind of person who embraced the world with open arms.

[35] When Montanus had a gripe with the landlord or a stranger who crossed her, he would tell her to let it go, to leave it to karma.

[36] He often lightened the...

[37] the mood after she argued with her husband, teasing that his daughter talked too much.

[38] Montanus didn't always agree with her father, but she loved his spirit.

[39] This January, Wichau was eager to regain his stamina after a recent series of hard operations, so that he could walk again for longer distances.

[40] Walking was how he explored San Francisco when he first arrived there from Thailand in 2000, to spend a year with Montanus, while he washington.

[41] He was she attended business school, and again in 2018, to help take care of her two sons.

[42] During the pandemic, Wichai usually left the house before 8 a .m. and made it back before his grandsons started their Zoom classes.

[43] On the morning of January 28th, when Montanus and the children were still asleep, he prepared to head out.

[44] His wife suggested that he have some coffee first.

[45] He told her he wouldn't be gone for long, whispering so as not to awake the kids.

[46] Then, in a jacket, jeans, and a white baseball cap, he slipped out of the apartment, down two flights of stairs, and into the foggy morning.

[47] The neighborhood of Anza Vista, tucked on a hilltop away from traffic, was usually quiet.

[48] On the corner where Wichab paused in his steps, there's a view of the bay and the skyscrapers downtown.

[49] A surveillance video captured what happened next.

[50] The footage is grainy and brief.

[51] A tall figure suddenly darts across a street and slams into a much smaller one.

[52] The smaller figure crumbles onto the pavement and doesn't get back up.

[53] The white baseball cap flutters to the ground, like a leaf falling from a tree.

[54] After her son's Zoom classes on January 28th, Montanis began to worry about where her father was.

[55] Maybe he went to Target, a few blocks from their home, where he liked to grab a coffee, and browse the aisles.

[56] During the pandemic, she persuaded him to avoid shopping and stick to outdoor walks.

[57] She had even persuaded him to leave his wallet at home, at least for another few weeks, when he was scheduled for his second shot of the coronavirus vaccine.

[58] She stepped out to check the front and the back of their building.

[59] The streets were quiet.

[60] When she came back in, she noticed his tablet was gone.

[61] She tried calling it, A strange voice picked up.

[62] Her father had been assaulted and taken to a hospital, a police officer said.

[63] She heard him say, severe trauma.

[64] The officer said she would have to call the hospital to find out more.

[65] The nurse who picked up, however, only had more questions.

[66] No one had been able to identify Ouija.

[67] His pockets contained a quarter and a pair of keys.

[68] Montanis gave the nurse her father's name.

[69] name, his medical record number, and his six prescriptions, which included a high dose of blood thinners.

[70] For the past two years, Montanus had started taking care of her parents more intensely, after her mother was diagnosed with dementia and her father with three clogged arteries.

[71] As Wichel recovered from each operation, Montanus had slept on the floor next to his bed, comforting him through the pain.

[72] A few hours after speaking with the nurse, a doctor called to ask permission to insert a catheter into a vein in his neck and drill a small hole into his skull, to release pressure from bleeding.

[73] Monthinus agreed, even as her worry turned to panic.

[74] Can I see my father?

[75] She asked.

[76] She told her husband, Eric Lawson, who rushed home from the restaurant where he worked.

[77] That evening, the couple stood at the doorway to her father's room on the third floor intensive care unit.

[78] A long, thick tube protruded from Weechaw's head.

[79] Intravenous lines and electrode patches linked his body to a constellation of machines and bags of fluid.

[80] Montanis ran to her father's side and held his hand.

[81] Pa, can you hear me?

[82] She repeated.

[83] A nurse came in and explained that the surgeon hadn't been able to stop the bleeding.

[84] Weechaw had lost so much blood by then that even if a second operation succeeded, he would almost certainly lose his most basic functions for the rest of his life.

[85] At one point, a neurologist hinted that if it were his father, he would most likely take him off life support.

[86] Montanis didn't hesitate.

[87] She wanted to keep him alive.

[88] I'm fine, even if he's in a wheelchair or doesn't wake up, she said.

[89] She never got to decide.

[90] Two days after entering the hospital, just before dawn.

[91] Wichah died in his sleep.

[92] Montanis was alone in the room with her sister on FaceTime.

[93] She watched him for several more hours, his hand in hers.

[94] Shortly after Wichah was pronounced dead, Montanis' phone rang.

[95] A homicide detective gave his condolences and said they were planning to charge the attack as a murder.

[96] Why would you call me when my father just died?

[97] Montanis wondered at first, her mind thick with shock.

[98] She had learned small details about the suspect from her initial conversations with the police.

[99] Male, 19 years old, African American.

[100] But her mind swirled with bigger questions.

[101] Where did the assault happen?

[102] What made her father bleed out like that?

[103] How long did he lie outside before an ambulance arrived?

[104] What kind of person would do this?

[105] The next day, Montanis tried to retrace her father's steps.

[106] She guessed he would have walked in a clockwise loop from their building.

[107] She often suggested he'd take that route because it included an uphill stretch that would help him get some cardio.

[108] When she made it to the hill, she noticed a neighbor working in his garage and asked if he knew where the episode happened the other day.

[109] The neighbor didn't appear to speak English, but he pointed toward her and shouted, right there.

[110] Montanis looked down.

[111] A few steps away, she noticed a dark stain at the end of a driveway.

[112] It looked like blood, but she wasn't sure.

[113] Montanis sat on her bed that evening with Eric and their 11 -year -old son Titus, Googling her father's age and the cross street where she found the stain.

[114] If he had been murdered, Montanis asked Eric, why wasn't it on the news?

[115] A close friend, also searching, sent her two links that vaguely mentioned Wheat -Cha, including an article published in Chinese by KTSF, a local outlet serving a primarily Chinese -American audience.

[116] There were several violent crimes in San Francisco on Thursday.

[117] The article began.

[118] Most of the victims were Asian.

[119] Around 10 p .m., a new search result popped up.

[120] A local ABC News affiliate had posted four.

[121] footage from a surveillance camera.

[122] Montanis's body went numb.

[123] She shut the laptop and told Titus to leave the room.

[124] She debated whether to show it to her mother, who had become more fragile after a recent stroke.

[125] Her mother had been blaming karma for her father's death.

[126] Weakened by his recent heart operations, Weecha often joked that life was getting too painful to bear.

[127] For a short while, Montanis half believed it too.

[128] When her mother saw the video, she stiffened.

[129] She told me, Go wash the blood right away, Montanis says.

[130] Otherwise, her mother believed, Wicha's soul couldn't leave the earth and start its journey toward the afterlife.

[131] Around midnight, after Eric and the boys went to bed, the two women drove to the corner with a bucket, gloves, and a dishbrush.

[132] Montanis squatted and scrubbed as her, mother poured a jug of water over the concrete, the headlights shining behind them.

[133] You're not doing it right.

[134] Her mother snapped at one point, grabbing the brush.

[135] As Montanis poured the water, she felt her breath shorten, bit by bit, until she was gasping for air.

[136] Months before the country went into lockdown, Russell Jung, a professor of Asian -American and studies at San Francisco State University, came down with a bad case of the flu.

[137] He had just gone to dinner with a few relatives visiting from Beijing.

[138] News of a viral outbreak in Wuhan had started circulating in the international news media.

[139] My wife and I thought, could it be?

[140] Jung recalled.

[141] A test soon showed that they had H1N1, a common strain of influenza, and their symptoms subsided within a week.

[142] but Jung grew wary when a doctor asked him if he had recently been to China and again when he learned that his relatives had been marooned at a hotel near the airport after being told they couldn't board their flight back home knowing what happened with SARS how Asians were going to get shunned harassed he says referring to the 2003 outbreak i was just personally and sociologically alerted to racism Zhang set up search alerts for Asian -American and discrimination.

[143] The results confirmed his fears.

[144] In the United States and elsewhere, private schools asked their Chinese international students not to return for the spring semester.

[145] Shopkeepers turned away customers who appeared Asian.

[146] Chinatowns emptied.

[147] In late January 2020, a man died outside a restaurant in Sydney after collapsing from a heart attack.

[148] No one helped him because they thought he had COVID, Jung says.

[149] After reading about an Asian American teenager in the Los Angeles area who was hospitalized in February after being bullied about COVID, Jung contacted colleagues at two advocacy groups in California.

[150] They asked the State Attorney General's office to help them track what they believed to be a growing number of episodes.

[151] They said they didn't have the capacity to track racism.

[152] Jung says.

[153] So we created our own website.

[154] The California Attorney General's Office collects data on hate crimes in the state, but not other cases involving verbal harassment, for example, which often don't constitute crimes.

[155] Within one week of the website's start, Stop AAPI Hate received 673 reports of verbal and physical attacks, as well as other forms of harassment, like spitting, coughing, and online threats.

[156] The submissions came from 31 states and the District of Columbia, with nearly half the reports originating in California and New York.

[157] Even without much publicity, we have already received a strong response from the community, who want their voices heard, Jung wrote in the group's first report.

[158] The number of submissions grew steadily throughout the year, reaching a total of 2 ,800 by the end of 2020.

[159] Then the flood came.

[160] Two days after Weechah died, Eric created a GoFundMe page to raise money for the funeral, which included a photo of Weecha and a description of his assailant derived from a mix of facts and raw emotion.

[161] A despicable 19 -year -old thug that came to his neighborhood in a stolen vehicle and decided to prove how tough he was by brutalizing a senior citizen, Eric wrote.

[162] Now that Mr. Wichha Ratanapakti has died of his injuries, prosecution for this murderous hate crime is the only path to justice and community safety.

[163] Later, as more information trickled in, Eric changed stolen vehicle to a car disabled by an earlier hidden run.

[164] He also replaced Thug with adult male, after watching an episode of SWAT in which a black cop explained the words racist undertones to his partner.

[165] Eric, who grew up near San Jose, described himself as someone who never thought much about race during his upbringing.

[166] His mother is Mexican, and he identifies as mixed race.

[167] Strangers often assume he is white.

[168] The next morning, Eric called the tip lines for several local news stations and left messages for reporters, inviting them to the Hall of Justice, where he and Montanis were scheduled to meet with homicide detectives.

[169] That afternoon, the couple taped their first interview with the KTVU reporter Evan Sarnovsky, near the courthouse steps.

[170] The segment ran with Ouichas photo and the headline, Family of 84 -year -old killed in SF believe attack was racially motivated.

[171] Weechas' story joined a cluster of reports about attacks on Asian elders in four cities.

[172] Amanda Wynne, a prominent activist, shared Sarnovsky's report in a viral Instagram video, along with two others, one about a 64 -year -old Vietnamese woman who was robbed in San Jose, and another about a 61 -year -old Filipino man, whose face was slashed with a box cutter on the New York subway.

[173] The mainstream media does not spotlight our stories enough, Wynne said into the camera, urging her vast following to share the story in Tag CNN and MSNBC.

[174] We matter, and racism is killing us.

[175] When a video emerged showing a 91 -year -old shoved to the ground in Chinatown in Oakland, California, the actor's Daniel Day Kim and Daniel Wu posted a $25 ,000 reward for anyone who had more information on the suspect, tweeting, remember Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death by two white men in Detroit in 1982.

[176] Other celebrities joined in.

[177] When I see photos of these Asian elders who have been attacked, the actor Simulieu wrote in variety, I see the embodiment of my own parents' journey, their dreams and their struggles, their sorrow, and their unwavering optimism.

[178] How many Wichar Atanapakis need to happen before you see anything at all?

[179] As the Lunar New Year approached in February, hundreds of people went out to protest the attacks.

[180] Stories like Wichas inspired some to start neighborhood patrol groups to accompany elders on their walks to and from home, scan the streets for suspicious activity, and in some cases, call the police to intervene.

[181] College students, high schoolers, and middle schoolers organized or attended rallies in their hometowns.

[182] Owners of gun stores reported more Asian customers than ever before.

[183] Then, on March 16th, a white gunman in the Atlanta area drove to several businesses and shot eight people to death.

[184] It was the deadliest mass shooting in the country in more than a year.

[185] Six of the victims, two women of Chinese descent, four women of Korean descent, worked at the businesses targeted by the gunmen, an unequivocal sign for many of those watching that he had acted out of hatred, misogyny, and racism.

[186] On Twitter and elsewhere, Asian Americans lit up their feeds with an outpouring of grief and rage.

[187] Less than 24 hours later, a spokesman for the Cherokee County Sheriff reduced the rampage to the act of a sex addict having a really bad day.

[188] Then it was revealed that the same spokesman reportedly promoted T -shirts calling the coronavirus an imported virus from China.

[189] The rage boiled over.

[190] In March, Zhang says, Stop AAPI hate received roughly 2 ,800 reports.

[191] about the same number he received in all of 2020.

[192] We don't know how to attribute this rise in reporting, he told me. He believes that the attacks on the elderly and the Atlanta shootings led more people to file reports.

[193] But he also suspects that the numbers reflect an animus that only deepened during lockdown.

[194] It's been a year of pent -up anger and frustration directed toward Asians, he says.

[195] There's been a half -million deaths.

[196] People are grieving.

[197] I think a lot of that grief and anger and scapegoating continues to be directed toward Asians.

[198] New images have continued to surface on a weekly, sometimes daily basis.

[199] Some assailants have yelled slurs while throwing a punch or slashing at their victims with a knife.

[200] Others have injured or killed people without saying a word.

[201] These stories have prompted continuous news coverage and social media obsession.

[202] And beneath it all, there lurks a desire to understand what is driving the attacks.

[203] And how, exactly, race is playing a role.

[204] The day after Montanis and Eric's first TV appearance, San Francisco's district attorney charged Antoine Watson, the 19 -year -old accused of shoving Weechat to death, with murder and elder abuse.

[205] Watson, the court documents, state, had been cited for reckless driving, speeding, and failure to stop at a stop sign in the hours before the attack.

[206] One witness at the scene told officers that he saw a black male, 18 to 30 years old, approach and stand over an elderly man lying on the ground.

[207] Another witness said he heard a voice yelling, Why are you looking at me?

[208] Why are you looking at me?

[209] And then a crushing sound.

[210] Watson pleaded not guilty.

[211] His public defender, Sliman Nawabi challenged the murder charge, arguing that Watson did not intend to kill Ouija.

[212] Noabi described the incident as an impulsive, unmotivated assault that resulted from the mental health breakdown of a teenager.

[213] He told me that Watson lost his job and support structure during the pandemic.

[214] In addition to attending college classes and working at FedEx, he had previously gone to therapy and taken medication.

[215] At Watson's bail hearing, Nawabi said he recognized the racial overtones of the case, but added, this false narrative that this is a targeted attack on the Asian community or an elderly man is misleading and prejudicial.

[216] He asked the court to order a neuropsychological evaluation and proposed releasing Watson to home confinement, where his family could look after him, along with requiring therapy and counseling, so that Watson, wouldn't become another statistic in the criminal justice world.

[217] Monthinus and Eric had been busy arranging her father's funeral while fielding phone calls and messages from family, friends, and strangers.

[218] A victim's advocate assigned by the district attorney's office helped the couple apply for state reimbursement for the cremation, the funeral, and other expenses.

[219] Donations flooded into their GoFundMe page, and they blew past their goal of $10 ,000 within days.

[220] Mayor London Breed and Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered condolences.

[221] The support was overwhelming and awed.

[222] Someone had been falsely claiming to reporters that he was Ouija's son and spoke on behalf of the family about what would happen to his remains.

[223] Another person claiming to be Weecha's son had set up a fundraiser in his name.

[224] That week, on February 4th, the couple spoke with San Francisco's district attorney, Chesa Budin on a call.

[225] A former public defender, Budin was part of a new wave of progressive prosecutors who entered office the year before with the promise of reform.

[226] Montanis and Eric voted for him.

[227] Now they wanted action.

[228] We were like, is this a hate crime?

[229] He was like, I can't talk about this, Eric says.

[230] It was just the way that he answered the question that made me feel like he didn't really care about our emotions.

[231] about what we were asking about.

[232] Budin, who couldn't discuss the particulars of the case, understood where Eric and Montanis were coming from.

[233] Anytime a family suffers a violent crime, a homicide in particular, there's questions, Budin told me. Why did this happen?

[234] How could it have been prevented?

[235] Often the natural human response is to want someone to blame for the pain that you're experiencing.

[236] He added, although our system is pretty effective at processing cases and punishing we're not effective at providing the kinds of answers to families in pain and need to feel a sense of closure or to be able to move on with their lives after suffering often unthinkable harm.

[237] Most states, 48, as well as the District of Columbia, have laws addressing hate crimes that are motivated by a victim's race, religion, or sexual orientation, among other classifications.

[238] These laws can add time to an underlying sentence.

[239] In California, they can extend a sentence by three years.

[240] But in practice, proving bias is difficult, especially when there's no explicit expression of it.

[241] After interviewing prosecutors across more than 30 states, Avlana Eisenberg, a law professor at Florida State University, found that district attorney's offices often avoid adding hate crime charges, even, and perhaps especially, when the crime is particularly horrific, she wrote in the Atlantic this year.

[242] This is in part because the defendant already faces a long prison sentence, and also because, as one prosecutor put it, it's impossible to know what's in someone's heart.

[243] The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in June that federal prosecutors declined to pursue hate crime charges in about four out of every five cases from 2005 to 2019.

[244] citing insufficient evidence.

[245] If Watson is convicted of murder, he could face 25 years to life in state prison.

[246] Being found guilty of a hate crime would not extend such a sentence significantly, but the designation has always symbolized more to victims and their families.

[247] The difference between calling out prejudice and denying it.

[248] One month after the Atlanta shootings, a white gunman killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis.

[249] Four of the victims were Sikh, prompting calls to examine whether the gunman was motivated by bias.

[250] Investigators interviewed some 100 people and reviewed 175 ,000 computer files, some of which indicated that the gunman had visited white supremacist websites.

[251] In July, however, the FBI concluded that the gunman, who killed himself after the shooting, had not acted out of bias or a desire to advance an ideology, but suffered from a mental illness and had committed suicidal murder.

[252] The Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group, published a statement asking the Bureau to clarify how and why it ruled out bias as a motive.

[253] Though law enforcement has said this investigation is over, for all the families who lost loved ones, the survivors, the Sikh community and anyone else impacted by hate violence, These questions will remain forever.

[254] The COVID -19 Hate Crimes Act, passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by President Biden in May, primarily aims to improve crime reporting and data collection.

[255] While it does not change the legal definition of a hate crime, the legislation commits funds to fast -track federal reviews of hate crime investigations and approves grants for local law enforcement agencies.

[256] It also encourages those agencies, to raise awareness about the impact of hate crimes and the services available to victims.

[257] The law was celebrated for recognizing the need to better track violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

[258] But it also drew criticism for effectively endorsing more policing at a time when law enforcement faced intense scrutiny, as well as for failing to address the root causes of racism or crime.

[259] Public safety is a lot bigger than the ability to arrest or prosecute, someone, says Tanish Hollins, who runs the advocacy group Californians for safety and justice.

[260] Through her organization, Hollins, who lost two brothers to homicide in the last decade, assists victims of crime and lobbies to increase support services provided by the state.

[261] One of the biggest flaws of hate crime laws, she says, is their focus on punishment.

[262] There may be a logic behind that.

[263] The question is, does it prevent things?

[264] like this from happening again?

[265] She continued.

[266] Regardless of the law's intent, how it's received is this is disingenuous because we're using the same tools to fix the problem.

[267] It's like continuing to use a screwdriver when you need to use a saw.

[268] The weeks went on, and Monthinus and Eric sank deeper into their grief as their suspicions mounted, toward homicide investigators, who never seemed able to give a straight answer.

[269] toward the district attorney, who seemed to put his interests before theirs, and toward Antoine Watson, about whom they knew little beyond the gaping hole he left in their lives.

[270] The court system, which they thought would deliver swift justice, was confoundingly slow.

[271] By then, Budin had told reporters that there was no evidence from the police suggesting that Weechat's death was motivated by racial animus.

[272] In the absence of any sense of resolution, the couple began searching for clues on their own.

[273] Several people suggested that there was more to the video that went viral, which prompted Montanus to walk around the block to knock on neighbors' doors and ask if they would share their security camera footage.

[274] Only one agreed.

[275] The video was taken from the same angle as the clip that everyone saw.

[276] Only this footage was longer.

[277] Montanis could now see her father enter the frame as he climbed up the hill into a corner where he would have continued straight.

[278] Instead, he paused for a moment and turned right, as though whatever caught his eye made him decide to change course.

[279] After the attack, as her father lay on the ground, a couple driving by stopped to place a blanket on him.

[280] As she replayed the footage again and again, Montanus kept coming back to the same conclusion.

[281] He didn't take anything from my father.

[282] Not even the tablet, she says.

[283] I got everything back.

[284] The house key?

[285] Even the quarter.

[286] Eric fixated on the footage, too.

[287] That's when I was like, this is more than some kind of accident or robbery or assault.

[288] This is a hate crime.

[289] In April, Montanis and Eric attended a rally opposite City Hall, where a hundred or so people gathered on a sandy plaza for speeches and martial arts demonstrations.

[290] Several young people carried signs with an illustration of a 75 -year -old Chinese woman, who a few weeks earlier was punched by a white man, and then fought back by whacking him with a wooden board.

[291] Montanis and Eric posed for photos and signed a petition to recall Chesa Budin, as people stopped to greet them with elbow bumps and condolences.

[292] A young man in a gas mask and a bulletproof vest said he had flown in from New York City after seeing the video.

[293] Eric complimented his vest and said he thought about wearing his.

[294] He ordered one after Wee Chas' death, along with a few cans of pepper spray and security cameras he installed around their apartment.

[295] He was also on a waiting list to become a registered gun owner.

[296] The rallies had become a place where the couple could not only feel less alone in their grief, but also seek answers they could.

[297] couldn't seem to get elsewhere.

[298] After Weechaw died, Eric says, he saw so many videos, video after video of attacks in the news.

[299] I was like, there is something going on here.

[300] After the first few rallies they attended, Eric casually surveyed attendees, asking whether they had ever been spit on or pushed and what the race of the perpetrator was.

[301] Everybody I talked to said it was from a black person, he told me. I know it's not a scientific poll or whatever.

[302] The responses confirmed a thought in his mind all the same.

[303] The data, though incomplete, show that hate crimes against Asian Americans were more likely to be committed by non -white offenders than those against Hispanics or African Americans, but the overwhelming majority of hate crime perpetrators are white.

[304] In several primetime interviews, including on Nightline and CNN, Eric went on to suggest that Weechaw's death was not a random outlier, but a result of one race targeting another.

[305] His comments tugged at a bigger, messier debate about race that had been building around the attacks.

[306] In the Bay Area, where Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up a quarter of the population, stories like Weechas sparked at least two opposing narratives.

[307] One was that there was a pattern of black perpetrators and Asian victims, that the pattern was a symptom of attention dating back decades.

[308] Another was that such a pattern was not only false, but that the belief in it was a racist misperception.

[309] These conversations surfaced the memory of black Americans killed senselessly by Asian perpetrators too.

[310] Latasha Harlins, the young teenager carrying $2 and a bottle of orange juice, shot to death by a Korean -American shopkeeper in 1991, a Kai Gurley, an unarmed young father shot to death in a dark stairwell by a Chinese -American police officer in 2014.

[311] And these memories, the sense of injustice that still lingered in them, overlapped with other histories still.

[312] For Sarah Wan, a community organizer who has been helping victims of violence in San Francisco, the debate brought back memories from 2010 when hundreds gathered outside City Hall to protest a series of similar reports.

[313] Among the most alarming were the stories of a 57 -year -old Asian woman who was pushed off a railway platform onto the tracks and an 83 -year -old Asian man who died from a head injury after being assaulted by a group of boys.

[314] In each case, the suspects were black.

[315] Juan's Group, Community Youth Center, responded by opening a new office in Bayview Hunter's Point, where the attacks occurred.

[316] When Juan first set up her branch there, the Bayview was in the midst of a drastic demographic shift that was occurring throughout the region, marked by an influx of Asians and an exodus of black residents.

[317] At one point, one group may emerge because they've got greater population, and another group feels pushed out, feels like they don't have a voice anymore.

[318] The Reverend A. Cecil Williams told the New York times in an article about the 2010 protest.

[319] In recent years, the Asian percentage of the Bayview's population has become five times as large as it was in 1980, while the black share has shrunk by more than half.

[320] And though half of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the Bay Area are low or very low income, as defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a quarter live in high -income households.

[321] They are often seen as beneficiaries of rising in inequality.

[322] The trust building really took us 10 years, Juan says.

[323] Yet today, I still face people from the black community who will come into our office on a weekly basis, saying that we only care about our people, that we just take their resources.

[324] It's still there.

[325] But we don't want to give up, because unless everybody's safe in that community, nobody is.

[326] Lisslin Lacoste, who runs a city program called Bee Magic and works with Juan's group, told me that undoing misperceptions between communities had no quick fix.

[327] There were debates among black residents about what contributed to the shortage of affordable housing, Lacost says.

[328] But tension also took subtler, more pervasive forms.

[329] The kind she could feel most recently at a neighborhood beauty supply store, when an Asian clerk followed her as she shopped.

[330] Solidarity is what it should be.

[331] be, she says.

[332] It's the everyday little microaggressions and little nuances that's harder to tackle.

[333] To fully appreciate the challenges that Juan and Lacost face requires understanding the forces that have shaped that neighborhood, and many others over decades.

[334] Redlining and employment discrimination, the long shadow of multiple tech booms, the burden of street violence, inadequate mental health care, surging homelessness, the police response to all of it.

[335] These shifts weren't always visible, but they were there beneath the influx or exodus, beneath the mistrust and grievances, beneath what each person, black or Asian, took away from the images of attacks flooding the news.

[336] Even inside the anti -Asian hate movement, every expression of grief and resolution differed.

[337] In March, a man waving a Lausian flag told a small crowd at a protest in San Mateo, California, that Ouichael reminded him of his grandparents, who collected cans to get by, which was why he decided to go on the front lines and patrol Chinatown in Oakland.

[338] That same month, at a protest for Angelo Quinto, a Filipino -American Navy veteran killed by police officers in Antioch, California in December 2020, a young woman from Hawaii broke into tears while remembering the story of her Filipino -Japanese family, migrants who worked the pineapple and sugar cane plantations, and the night the cops detained her father, who struggled with addiction during a mental health crisis.

[339] In April, while patrolling San Francisco's Chinatown, a former mayor and son of immigrants from Taishan and Hong Kong, pointed to the bank across the street and told me his mother was mugged there a few years ago.

[340] He said she didn't want to go to court.

[341] She just wanted to bury it.

[342] At a vigil in Madison Park in Oakland, the week after the Atlanta shootings, a mother stood with her young son, holding a sign with Weechaw's face on it.

[343] She was a Thai immigrant living in Alameda, a diverse town, she said.

[344] But one day last year, while biking near her house, an elderly man shouted at her, You don't belong here.

[345] Another time, while walking around the neighborhood with her son, They waved and smiled at a young lady who was listening to music and dancing.

[346] She turned around to my son and said, F you little boy.

[347] Each incident left her in shock and compelled her to attend the vigil.

[348] Her hope was for all people to work together and not blame each other.

[349] It's like being bullied.

[350] When a sibling bullies another sibling, and then they go to school, and then they bully other kids.

[351] It's like a chain reaction.

[352] Then there was Montanus and Eric.

[353] Their desire to make sense of Ouija's death, to understand what motivated it, placed them in the center of a conversation so much broader than their own.

[354] At the rallies they attended, every now and then a different black man approached the microphone, or met with the couple on the sidelines, and tried his best to break the ice.

[355] One of them, a young organizer, told them about the Asian Americans who had marched beside him last summer, and said he grew up with Asian neighbors, and lately felt that everything is so separated.

[356] Another simply laid his hand over his chest during an impromptu speech, and looking at Montanus, said, My heart goes out to you.

[357] Montanis hasn't known what to really make of these gestures.

[358] She could see that Weecha's death meant something bigger than her own grief, that he was part of a history that preceded her, and a future she could.

[359] could help shape.

[360] But what brought her out to the rallies, more than anything, was her desire for someone to answer for the loss of her father.

[361] During her own speech that day, which she wrote by hand and rehearsed the night before, Montanus told the crowd to call the city, including the police, for help when necessary.

[362] You can dial 311 or 9 -1 -1, she reminded them.

[363] They have any language to help anybody.

[364] I met Montanis one breezy afternoon in April at Wat Nagara Damar, a Buddhist temple outfitted inside a small two -story house across the street from Golden Gate Park.

[365] In a quiet room upstairs draped in gold and red, she knelt before a shrine of Buddhas, vases filled with fresh tulips and a black and white portrait of her father.

[366] She lowered her head and opened her palms to touch the rug three times.

[367] Montanis and her parents subscribed to a Buddhist belief that, after death, the soul takes 100 days to reach the afterlife.

[368] This was the 70th.

[369] She had come every morning to wish her father a safe journey.

[370] Montanis offered me a pastry and asked if I had seen the latest news, about the 64 -year -old Asian woman in Riverside, California, who was stabbed in the stomach while walking her dogs and later died of her injuries.

[371] Earlier that week, two more videos emerged from New York City, of a man in Times Square stomping on a woman on her way to church, of a man punching and choking another man on the J -train.

[372] In each instance, the bystanders appeared to do nothing.

[373] The stories filled Montanus with questions.

[374] Why, since her father's death, did it feel as if there were more cases every day?

[375] Why was no one intervening?

[376] I want to know why, she said.

[377] In another week, her sons would go back to school, and Montanis, a food safety inspector for the city school district, would be back at work.

[378] Eric, who worked at two restaurants as a server and manager before the pandemic, was on unemployment.

[379] She could feel the weight of the pandemic starting to lift, but where there had once been anticipation, she now felt dread.

[380] Since her father's death, she and Eric agreed that no one would go out at night without him.

[381] Whenever she left the house, she tested a can of pepper spray in the bathroom, the fumes burning her eyes, before tucking it in her pocket.

[382] In the months since her father died, she and Eric had spent so much of their time at rallies, at court, or on the phone with reporters and lawyers.

[383] Their younger son, Troy, a bright and playful eight -year -old who is autistic, had become more easily agitated during the lockdown and often stomped and shouted.

[384] Their landlord had sent a series of noise complaints and eviction warnings.

[385] Eric also busied himself with emails to architects and building managers in Chinatown, where he was planning a mural a few blocks from the Dragon Gate.

[386] There was barely a moment to grieve.

[387] At one point the couple agreed to stop going to rallies for a while, but inevitably they would get in the car with a poster of Weech Island, in the back.

[388] It's not because we feel bad, Montanis told me one evening while sitting on the bed where her father used to sleep, Titus playing video games nearby.

[389] But AAPI still attacked, deeper, deeper every day.

[390] It's non -stop, you know.

[391] She thought about the people she had met at the rallies who had quit their jobs to patrol or speak out full time.

[392] She worried about how the exposure affected her sons.

[393] She tried to shield them from the video, but sometimes the evening news would be on and the footage would flash by before she could turn it off.

[394] After the funeral, Montanis and Eric hired a therapist to help Titus.

[395] He had not cried and seldom said anything about the episode.

[396] During one appointment, the therapist asked if he felt angry, and he replied in that sheepish pre -teen way.

[397] I don't know.

[398] Montanis knew the extra sessions were probably a lot.

[399] On top of school, weekend, tie, and coding classes, and the therapist he already sees to manage his ADHD.

[400] But she and Eric feared that the trauma might manifest years or decades later.

[401] She wasn't sure if Troy even knew what was happening.

[402] Then one day, after knocking on a neighbor's door to ask about their surveillance footage, she returned to her car to find Troy crying in the back seat.

[403] When they got home, he pulled out her phone, and instead of putting on his usual cartoons, he scrolled through her photos.

[404] Where's Grandpa?

[405] Troy asked her.

[406] Montanus pulled him close.

[407] From behind, she didn't want him to see her crying.

[408] If you miss Grandpa, she told him, go to his photo and say hi.

[409] Troy walked up to two framed portraits of his grandfather that now hung side by side on the wall.

[410] Hi, he shouted over and over.

[411] Montanis knew she should find a counselor for herself, too.

[412] She wanted to be strong for her sons, but she had trouble sleeping at night and broke into tears unexpectedly.

[413] Sometimes Titus would walk into her bedroom to watch TV, see her turn away, and ask, Mom, are you crying?

[414] Sometimes she walked into a room to see her own mother turn away, sniffling and cheering.

[415] It's okay, he must be happy now, because he's not coming back anymore.

[416] And sometimes, when they were alone and the guilt swelled inside Montanus, she fell apart.

[417] Mom, you know what?

[418] I'm a bad daughter, she would say.

[419] I told him to walk that way.

[420] I killed Dad.

[421] Montanis arrived at the steps of the San Francisco Hall of Justice, an imposing concrete building that spans a city block, where Antoine Watson was scheduled to appear for a pretrial hearing.

[422] She clutched a few sheets of paper in one hand.

[423] A news cameraman wrestled with his tripod.

[424] At the first rally, a month earlier in March, several hundred people gathered here in support of her family.

[425] Montanis was too emotional then.

[426] Today she had prepared a speech and printed a few copies to distribute to reporters, but the steps were nearly empty.

[427] It was still early, Montanis reminded herself, but she also couldn't shake the feeling that the world seemed to be moving on.

[428] There had been so many attacks since the one on her father, and the headlines were preoccupied with the truth, trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd.

[429] Inside, Montanis held her composure as her frustration grew.

[430] After the last court hearing, Montanis called the victim's advocate assigned to her by the district attorney's office to request a Thai translator.

[431] She found it hard to follow the legal vocabulary and felt bad asking Eric to explain terms and intricacies.

[432] After several weeks, the advocate replied that the office didn't have the budget to hire a translator.

[433] She felt similarly snubbed after asking the advocate about applying for compensation for lost wages.

[434] After her father died, Montanis had given up her night job processing customs paperwork for an import -export company to help watch the kids.

[435] You know what she said?

[436] She said, you are not a victim.

[437] Your father is a victim.

[438] Under California law, families of victims are eligible for work compensation only if a minor died or was hospitalized.

[439] As they waited for Antoine's hearing to start, Montanis and Eric watched from the front row of the gallery as the judge heard a series of other cases.

[440] Due to the pandemic, the court had reopened at limited capacity to an enormous backlog.

[441] Budin, who started his term just a few months before the lockdown, in January 2020, inherited more than 5 ,000 criminal prosecutions.

[442] Two hours later, Antoine finally entered the room.

[443] From the front row, Montanis fixed her gaze on him as he walked slowly to a seat near the gallery.

[444] His orange jumpsuit fit loosely over his tall frame, chains linking his wrists, his hair growing out.

[445] Before sitting down, He glanced toward the back of the room and smiled when he recognized a young man. Antoine grew up in San Francisco and spent part of his childhood with his siblings, parents, and grandparents in the Anza Vista area, where Weecha later lived.

[446] The whole family is in deep agony.

[447] Jennifer Steiner, a longtime friend whom Antoine's mother chose to speak on her behalf, told me. Antoine didn't wake up January 28, 2021 with the idea of shoving somebody down and killing them, regardless of their race or gender.

[448] That's not who he is.

[449] Steiner, who was Antoine's elementary school principal, said he needed mental health support, not prison time.

[450] According to Sleiman Nawabi, the public defender, Antoine feels remorse and shame for what happened and wishes he could sit down with Weechaw's family so he could explain the struggles he has gone through in life.

[451] His mother, who was also laid off from her job during lockdown, found work through relatives in another state, and was, for a while, supporting the family from afar.

[452] She wakes up, crying.

[453] She goes to sleep, crying, Steiner said.

[454] She's lost her child.

[455] The hearing was brief and procedural.

[456] A trial date has yet to be said.

[457] As two bailiffs escorted Antoine out, the young man in the back left the courtroom and returned with a baby in his arms.

[458] Antoine, he shouted, holding up the baby.

[459] Love you, dude.

[460] The young man repeated himself.

[461] Antoine turned around and smiled again, until the door closed on him.

[462] On her drive home, Montanis thought about a defendant she saw earlier in the courtroom.

[463] The man had accepted a plea agreement for domestic violence charges, and afterward his victim asked the judge if she could say a few words.

[464] When she finished, the defendant lifted his glasses and wiped his eyes.

[465] Montanus wanted to speak to the judge too.

[466] I have no chance to talk.

[467] How I'm feeling right now.

[468] How I deal with it every time I do laundry.

[469] Every time I drive to work, she said, looking in her rearview mirror, tears streaming.

[470] She thought about her father in the back of the car with the kids.

[471] There banter when she got ready for work in the morning.

[472] The way he greeted her with relief when she came home late from work.

[473] She thought about Antoine, knowing there were people in his life who loved him.

[474] He's 19 years old to be in jail.

[475] She trailed off and let out a deep son.

[476] eye.

[477] She had always looked to her father when something troubled her conscience.

[478] He had guided her through life's big decisions, her moments of uncertainty and doubt.

[479] He was the one who encouraged her to go to the United States, the reason she started her life here.

[480] Now all that remained was the memory of him, the sound of his voice in her head.

[481] She knew what he would say if he were here now, that Antoine was still young, that he still had a life ahead of him.

[482] Give him a chance, she could hear her father saying, let it go.

[483] A few days later, Eric asked me if I saw the news about the recent attack on Carl Chan, the head of Oakland's Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, who has been a vocal supporter of increasing foot patrols and camera surveillance in the neighborhood.

[484] Chan shared a photo of the person he said attacked him, who appeared to be black, with reporters.

[485] Eric said the photo, which was taken from behind and does not show a face, made the person look hateful.

[486] I know that's totally crazy, he said, but I get that feeling sometimes.

[487] I wonder if it's my inner racism coming out.

[488] Or am I just sensitive?

[489] Or is this my trauma?

[490] I'm not a judge, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a cop, I'm just a human being who feels things.

[491] He pondered this while sitting in his car, in the spot where Antoine reportedly parked on the morning of the attack on Wee Chah.

[492] Grandpa died as a result of Antoine not being arrested for reckless driving, he said, and then not having proper services to come out and talk to him while he's out here yelling all morning.

[493] He thought about Antoine's family, and something his friend once told him, about how when his son had issues with another family, he would meet with them to talk about it.

[494] I have this weird, stupid fantasy, Eric said.

[495] The future me, the real me, says, I wish we could forgive everybody, and everybody should acknowledge this bad thing happened.

[496] And right now, it feels like maybe his family sees me as an enemy.

[497] And in a way, I kind of am.

[498] But I don't want it to be like that.

[499] I want to know what happened.

[500] I want to know the truth.

[501] I just want to know why he did it.

[502] And once I hear that, I don't think we have a choice but to accept it.

[503] I don't know if we can, you know, let him go, he added.

[504] I think he has to pay for what he did.

[505] But once he does, we should work out some kind of situation where we could forgive somehow and move on with our life.

[506] Otherwise, you're going to have that forever.

[507] But maybe we're going to be hurt forever anyway.

[508] One hundred days after her father's death, Montanis boarded a boat with Eric, their sons, and a few friends.

[509] Three monks carried piles of orchids and roses, a framed photo of Ouichae, and a forest green box.

[510] holding his remains.

[511] Their marigold robes glowed in the sun.

[512] Montanus wore a black wool cloak over a pleaded dress that flew up as the boat pulled away from the dock.

[513] Titus, dressed in a black suit in a pair of his grandfather's leather loafers that fit tight around his growing feet, chased his little brother around the deck.

[514] They sailed toward the Golden Gate Bridge, the choppy waters jostling them as they chanted the five precepts.

[515] A web camera streamed the ceremony for friends and family abroad.

[516] Before his third heart operation, We Chaw debated whether to go through with the procedure.

[517] He wasn't sure if he would make it.

[518] He told Montanus that when the time came, he wanted to be scattered in the bay, the place that became his home.

[519] You're going to survive, Dad, Montanis told him.

[520] I'm going to take care of you.

[521] You have to live longer so you can watch Titus Gras, graduate from college.

[522] On the far side of the bridge, where the bay meets the Pacific, the engine stopped.

[523] The group filed out to the edge of the deck.

[524] Everyone fell silent.

[525] A monk leaned over and gently shook Wee Cha's ashes into the lapping waves.

[526] Friends scattered the flower petals.

[527] Montanus wailed softly.

[528] Eric held her, and she held her sons.

[529] As she watched the parade of flowers and ashes float out to sea, she spoke to him.

[530] I kept my promise, Dad, she said.

[531] In the next life, I hope I'll get to be your daughter again.