‘Uncle Vicha’ and the Doom of California

Posted on | September 2, 2026 | No Comments

San Francisco Judge Linda Colfax

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Stop Asian Hate” movement gained nationwide attention, claiming there was a “sudden surge in anti-Asian racism” as a result of the pandemic. Some of us were skeptical, and noted how often attacks on Asian-Americans were perpetrated by the usual suspects. Such was the case in a 2021 incident in San Francisco:

Vicha Ratanapakdee . . . was an 84-year-old Thai man who was killed as a result of being forcefully pushed to the ground in a daylight attack in San Francisco, California, United States by an African-American male. His death became a lightning rod for the Stop Asian Hate movement.
At approximately 8 a.m. on January 28, Vicha left his daughter’s apartment in the Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco, where he had been supervising his grandsons, to go on a walk while the children were attending Zoom online classes. He was walking around Fortuna Avenue when 19-year-old Antoine Watson, an African-American male, ran across the street and violently shoved him to the ground. Vicha’s head hit the pavement as he fell. He never regained consciousness and died two days after arrival in the hospital from a brain hemorrhage. The killing was captured on a CCTV camera across the street.

Excuse the awkwardness of the prose in that Wikipedia summary, and let me call you attention to some of the facts here:

Two days after the assault, Antoine Watson was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and murder. Watson was identified through additional surveillance footage, matching clothes, and the license plate of his BMW, which was on record as he had been stopped hours before the assault at around 2 a.m. for reckless driving and speeding after running two stop signs on Cole Street at Parnassus Avenue and crashing into a parked car. Shortly before the attack, a surveillance camera captured Watson parking his car in Anza Vista and punching a different parked vehicle before running off-screen. Both cameras showed Watson returning to the car to retrieve his cell phone and walking back to Fortuna Avenue, where he took pictures of Vicha’s unconscious body before leaving for the parking lot again and driving away.

Antoine Watson was driving a BMW. Were you driving a BMW when you were 19 years old? Yet here was this teenager, driving around San Francisco at 2 a.m., running stop signs and crashing into a parked car, and the cops just turned him loose? Beyond that, after assaulting 84-year-old “Grandpa Vicha” in an unprovoked attack, Watson returned to the scene of the crime to take a picture of the unconscious body of his victim, as if to collect a trophy of his deed. Also, no matter how closely you might have followed this story, you may not have realized that Antoine Watson was not a San Francisco resident. He was from Daly City in suburban San Mateo County, about 10 miles away from where he fatally assaulted Ratanapakdee. Aggravating circumstances, you see.

Antoine Watson in the courtroom.

We do not have a mug shot of Antoine Watson because apparently, as a result of some “criminal justice reform,” police in California no longer publish mug shots of criminals, because heaven forbid the voters discover who is actually committing crimes in their communities. Anyway, it took nearly five years for this case to work its way to trial. In January 2026, a jury refused to convict Watson of murder, instead finding him guilty of the lesser sentence of involuntary manslaughter. Two months later, there was outrage when San Francisco Superior Court Judge Linda Colfax turned Watson loose on probation, giving him credit for time served:

The judge said at the sentencing that imprisonment would have a “poor impact” on Watson.
“She said Mr. Watson has trouble in his life because he’s from a broken family, parents fighting … that doesn’t mean you can kill other people,” Vicha’s daughter, Monthanus Ratanapakdee, told the California Post.
Colfax — a former public defender who has boasted about her “inclusive” courtroom featuring a nameplate with her she/her pronouns — has previously come under fire for the lenient treatment of other accused criminals. . . .
When it comes to Watson, Ratanapakdee argued the sentence reflects “a pattern of prior leniency.”
She said that her dad’s killer, who had a criminal record as a juvenile, had already been given second chances.
Ratanapakdee felt that Colfax was “biased” against the prosecution.
“I’ve been there almost two months in the trial, and I see how she was taking sides with the defense. That is my opinion,” she said.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told The Post that Colfax’s decision was “troubling.”
“The judge was limited in some regard by the penal code that left his exposure at nine years, which is what we asked for,” Jenkins said. “But seemed to rely on this theory that because of his age at the time of the crime, he did not deserve more custody.
“While I can appreciate consideration of someone’s age and their youth, he took a man’s life — he took an innocent man’s life,” Jenkins added,
“And the fact that a judge believes that his time in the county jail was sufficient and he served probation is troubling to me. I don’t think it teaches him the magnitude of what he did.”

That phrase “limited in some regard by the penal code” is a major clue that the problem in California isn’t really just about left-wing judges — the legislature has enacted various “criminal justice reform” measures that make it difficult to put criminals behind bars and keep them there.

But who elects the legislature? Who elects the judges? And who was sitting on the jury that decided Watson was not guilty of murder?

The citizens of California are the problem.

In 2010, Kamala Harris was narrowly elected attorney general of California, getting only 46% of the vote, and defeating Republican Steve Cooley by a margin of less than 60,000 votes out of 9.6 million votes cast. Six years later, Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate with 62% of the vote. Running for president in 2024, Harris got 58% of the vote in California.

California is now a one-party state, and San Francisco has been a Democrat-controlled city so long that hardly anyone alive can remember the last time the city elected a Republican mayor (in 1964). Given this reality, California is utterly doomed. Nothing can be done to redeem the state, and this is true of any city or state where Democrats obtain hegemonic control. What is true of California may eventually be true of the entire United States, if people do not wake up to the danger.

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