Outburst reveals 'other' Taheri-Azar

Judge sends defendant in attack last year at UNC-CH to Dorothea Dix

HILLSBOROUGH -- To Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar's family, there's the normal Ray, and the other Ray.

Normal Ray smiles at his sisters and parents in court. He writes poems. He no longer owns a Quran, and regrets driving onto the UNC-Chapel Hill campus last year aiming at people, as he said then, to avenge Muslim deaths.

The other Ray still struggles with extreme religious views his family says he picked up from a one-time family friend. He thinks he did what he had to for Allah to secure a good place for himself in the afterlife.

On Monday, a judge sent the other Ray to Dorothea Dix Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation after Taheri-Azar shouted curses in the courtroom, proclaimed his hatred of Jews and America and called his court-appointed lawyer a moron.

"One minute he's Ray, our brother," older sister Laila Taheri-Azar said in an interview. "He's kind and sweet and everything. And the next, he doesn't know who we are and who he is. ... He can't tell the difference between who he is and who he was."

In January, Taheri-Azar, 23, formally pleaded not guilty to nine counts of attempted first-degree murder and nine counts of felonious assault.

After Monday's brief court session, Public Defender James Williams said his client "has a severe mental illness" that had just affected his actions in court and on March 3, 2006, the day he drove through campus, injuring nine people.

Williams questions his client's ability to participate in his own defense. If a judge finds Taheri-Azar incompetent, his case could be delayed until he is judged competent.

It's too early to assume incompetence, Orange-Chatham District Attorney Jim Woodall said.

"All indications, frankly, are that he is competent," he said. "He seemed to be voicing his position. ... I think that's what throws people off. He's just expressing opinions that most of us would disagree with."

In recent months, Taheri-Azar had appeared in court clean shaven and composed, wearing sport coats and trousers. On Monday, he entered the courthouse with a beard, wearing an orange jumpsuit with his arms, waist and legs chained.

Turning from the judge, he addressed the gallery: "Everybody, I hate all Americans and all Jews."

"Death to Israel," he added.

Taheri-Azar also turned to Williams, his lawyer, and said, "Who is this fool? Who is this moron? I don't know who this moron is."

Within seconds he was led out of court, and the proceedings finished without him. Superior Court Judge Kenneth Titus agreed to move Taheri-Azar to Dorothea Dix Hospital for assessment. For most of the year he has been held in safe keeping at Raleigh's Central Prison in lieu of $5.5 million bail.

To Laila Taheri-Azar, her brother's outburst shows his mental instability.

She said he has tried to kill himself in Central Prison at least twice: once by fasting, and once by ingesting a hair lotion. Department of Correction spokesman George Dudley would not comment, saying Taheri-Azar's medical records are private.

Laila Taheri-Azar said that if her brother truly believed in Islam he would never attempt suicide because it's essentially an unforgivable sin.

"Honestly, every letter we get from him, we open it not knowing what to expect. His shifts in state of mind and mentality have been one surprise after another," she said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon.

Extreme beliefs

The Taheri-Azars moved from Iran when Ray, as close family and friends call him, was 2. They went briefly to California, then to Charlotte, where Taheri-Azar grew up. Now, family is scattered, with his mother working in Afghanistan, his father in California and Laila Taheri-Azar, 30, studying in a Miami cosmetology school. His youngest sister is in college in Charlotte.