Former informant's life gets more furtive

The hurried, raspy voice on the 10:59 p.m. phone message on Dec. 20 got quickly to the point.

"Mr. Parsons, this is Kamran. I'm just petrified of the situation."

He said he'd just been notified by the Orange County Sheriff's Department, in accordance with its policy in such matters, that one of two men who allegedly assaulted him three weeks earlier in the garage of a Buena Park home had posted $100,000 bail. The other man remained at large.

The man's release sent a chill through Kamran Mashayekhi, a 66-year-old limo driver and former police informant. As the victim of the alleged incident, he could do the math. Besides, Mashayekhi said, his assailant had told him that night he'd kill him if he went to the police.

Now, Mashayekhi says, he's changing motels almost nightly.

He's stayed in irregular contact with me since I wrote about his situation Dec. 8. In that column, he described how he'd answered a call for a trip to LAX and was lured into the caller's garage on the premise that his luggage was there.

Once he got inside, Mashayekhi says, the man said he knew Mashayekhi had been a police informant. The alleged assailant and another man who arrived moments later then spent 60 to 90 minutes punching, kicking and threatening his life, Mashayekhi says.

Instead of following up on their threat to drive him to the desert and kill him, Mashayekhi said, they let him go. He called Buena Park police from the first pay phone he found; they arrested Gilbert Carrillo, who faces charges of robbery, false imprisonment and threatening a witness. A preliminary hearing is scheduled Jan. 17. A spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney says a protective order for Mashayekhi will be issued.

I talked to Mashayekhi last week and again this week. "Ever since he was released, it's been a nightmare," he says. He ticked off the names of several cities he's stayed in, from San Diego County to L.A. County. Usually, he says, it's one night at a time.

"Let me explain it to you," he says. "If I'm not around, the D.A. doesn't have a case. You understand?"

The thrust of my first column on Mashayekhi was his willingness to testify, perhaps in the face of potential danger. But when we talked that day, his alleged assailant was in custody.

And now that he had been released? Was Mashayekhi as resolute? Will he still show up if the case moves ahead?