Hoodad Afrasiabi was 5 months old when he died on Monday, Nov. 16, 2009, in Glendale. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 1851 Tyburn St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Glendale Police Department case.
A public family history record gives his date of birth as May 27, 2009, which means he had lived not quite six months. The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report entry on his death was only a sentence long. A fuller account appears in a news report that was later reposted on an online true-crime forum, and it describes how a car crash first seemed to explain his injuries.
On Nov. 16, police responded to a crash at Gardena Avenue and Tyburn Street and found that "an unoccupied vehicle had slammed into a tree." Officers then got a call from Glendale Memorial Hospital, advising them that the boy's mother, Fereshteh Eghtedari, and "her son, 5-month-old Hoodad Afrasiabi, were in the emergency room." Hoodad died that same day from blunt-force trauma to the head that, at the time, could have been tied to the impact of the crash.
Police had doubts from the start. The report said the evidence did not support that explanation, especially given that investigators could not find witnesses to the crash. "The red flags were up early on," Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. Those doubts were confirmed when a coroner's investigation determined that Hoodad's injuries "were caused by being thrown or slammed by an adult," according to Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter.
By the time the death was ruled a homicide, the report said, homicide detectives had been trying for more than a month to contact Eghtedari, then 35, and she had disappeared sometime after the crash. "We are still investigating it, but I think she fled," Lorenz said. Her husband had also disappeared, according to Lorenz. The report noted that no arrest warrant had been issued at that point. No later account of an arrest, a charge or a court case could be found, and the mother has never been publicly accused in court of causing her son's death.
Glendale is a city of about 200,000 people on the northern edge of Los Angeles. It is best known for the shopping districts around Brand Boulevard, including the Americana at Brand and the Glendale Galleria, and for Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Away from its downtown, much of the city is made up of quiet residential streets of houses and apartment buildings, and it is on one of those streets, Tyburn Street, that the crash was reported.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Hoodad Afrasiabi could be found in news archives or public records. More than 16 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Neighbors near Gardena Avenue and Tyburn Street, people who saw the crash scene in November 2009, and anyone who knows where the family went after that month may hold information that matters to detectives. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a vehicle seen nearby or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can contact the Glendale Police Department, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
