SF Man Convicted of String of Attacks Against Asian American Victims in 2019

A San Francisco man was found guilty Tuesday of a string of violent crimes that appeared to target Asian Americans more than five years ago, shaking the city’s immigrant community.

Keonte Gathron, 25, who represented himself in the proceedings, was accused of seven carjackings, burglaries and armed robberies, including against multiple children, in January 2019. The most high-profile of the attacks was against Yik Oi Huang, whose brutal beating in a Visitacion Valley park put the largely Asian community on edge.

Gathron faced more than two dozen counts ranging from elder abuse and felony robbery to murder, which was upgraded from attempted murder after Huang died a year following the attack.

Susanna Yee, Huang’s granddaughter, said after the jury read its verdict that her family could finally take a sigh of relief, nearly seven years after Huang’s beating.

She said repeated delays to the trial in recent years felt like they “constantly open[ed] the wound.”

“And so we feel a sense of closure, we can take a deep breath. And now we wait for sentencing,” she told reporters.

After reading their verdict, the jury had to return to deliberation to clear up confusion related to one count regarding whether Gathron used a firearm during one of the attacks. That decision is expected to be finalized on Tuesday afternoon.

Gathron’s sentencing has not yet been set. He could face life in prison.

His attacks, including against Huang, were never officially charged as hate crimes, but Asian Justice Movement organizer Charles Jung said the pattern of attacking Asian victims speaks for itself.

“When someone allegedly victimizes multiple people of the same ethnicity in rapid succession, as is alleged, the impact is the same, I would say,” he told KQED at the trial’s opening. “It has the impact of terrorizing a community and making people feel unsafe because of who they are.”

The first attack came Jan. 3, 2019, when Gathron hit Dhung My Chung from behind, stole his keys and drove off in his car, San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Nathan Quigley told the jury during the weekslong proceedings.

The following day, he robbed Guifeng Yu, prosecutors said.

Throughout the next few weeks, he also stole the car of a man dropping his wife off at a Sunset District bus stop and took two minors’ cellphones at gunpoint. Quigley said he let a third teenager — his only non-Asian victim — go with her phone after she told him she needed it for school.

The attack against Huang occurred on Jan. 8 of that year. Quigley told the court that Gathron attacked the 88-year-old known affectionately by Visitacion Valley neighbors as “Grandma Huang” as she practiced her usual qigong, a traditional Chinese exercise that combines movement, breathing and meditation, at a local park before sunrise.

Huang had walked to the Leland Avenue park across the street from her home as she did most mornings, where Gathron is said to have approached her, beaten her and stolen her keys. He left her lying in the sand under a slide, bloodied and hidden from street view by a recycling bin.

Huang was treated and placed in long-term care until she died almost a year later, on Jan. 3, 2020.

Huang had been a fixture of the Visitacion Valley neighborhood for nearly two decades. She’d purchased the home about a decade after immigrating from Toisan, China, in 1986, settling first in a Chinatown SRO.

Over nearly 20 years, Huang became a community presence, her family said — often walking with friends around the park or leading the Visitacion Valley Friendship Club, an advocacy and senior group serving her Chinese immigrant neighbors.

After her death, the community renamed the park in her honor. The Yik Oi Peace & Friendship Park was dedicated in June 2024.

“The renaming effort is unifying us with the goals of ending cycles of violence and healing long-simmering cultural and racial divisions,” said Anne Seeman, co-founder of Visitacion Valley Greenway.