Suspect in Pit Attack Apologizes, Found Competent to be Tried

Posted on June 12, 2007

A few months ago, Mohammed Taheri-Azar issued a venom-filled tirade in an Orange County courtroom, shouting obscenities and calling his court-appointed lawyer a moron.

Now, the man accused of striking nine people on the UNC campus with an SUV last year has something even more shocking to say: He’s sorry.

On June 13, Taheri-Azar was found competent to stand trial on murder charges by a judge who examined a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.

The Orange County Superior Court Judge’s office confirmed that Taheri-Azar, 23, sent a letter last month to the court apologizing for his actions.

“I am very sorry for the crimes which I committed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on March 3, 2006,” Mohammed Taheri-Azar wrote in a letter dated May 20, according to a report in The News & Observer. “I sincerely regret what I did on that day. Please release me from state custody so that I may pursue my goal of living a productive life in California.”

In the handwritten mea culpa, which is addressed simply “Dear Sir or Madam,” Taheri-Azar also apologizes for the courtroom outburst that caused a judge to send him to Dorothea Dix Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, The N&O reported.

“I … apologize for my distasteful conduct in your courtroom on March 5, 2007. I promise you that I will never again in my life display such poor, ignorant behavior.

“My primary goal in life is now to work for my father’s general contracting company in Anaheim, California, and to reestablish myself as a good, caring and productive member of society.”

The Superior Court office confirmed that Judge Kenneth C. Titus ’73 gave a copy of the letter to the county’s public defender and district attorney, although Judge Carl R. Fox ’75, District 15B’s senior resident Superior Court judge, previously enacted an order to seal all correspondence from the defendant.

Titus, a visiting Superior Court judge from Durham County, reportedly was unaware of Fox’s order to seal the letter and thus its contents made it to the public defender, the district attorney and, ultimately, the media. However, Titus reportedly is in the process of entering an order to seal all future correspondence between Taheri-Azar and the Superior Court. Titus will end his six-month rotation as visiting Superior Court judge of Orange County in July, at which time Wake County Judges Paul Gessner and Michael R. Morgan will step in.

In January, Taheri-Azar pleaded not guilty to nine counts of attempted first-degree murder and nine counts of felonious assault in connection with the incident at the Pit, a student meeting place on campus. Police say he was attempting to avenge Muslim deaths. None of the nine victims required overnight hospitalization.

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Related coverage is available online:

• Driver in Pit Incident Pleads Not Guilty
  News report from February 2007
• Driver in Pit Attack Agrees to Representation
  News report from June 2006

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