Man Ordered to Mental Hospital for Killing Mom

SANTA ANA —  A premed student who fatally beat his mother in April was ordered on Thursday to spend 15 years to life in a state mental hospital after prosecutors agreed to a rare insanity plea.

Afshin Haghighi, 23, of Irvine answered in a clear voice as he admitted in Orange County Superior Court that he killed his mother, Zahra Haghighi, who was 54.

As Haghighi family members and friends looked on, Judge David O. Carter then accepted the insanity plea and ordered him sent to Patton State Mental Hospital in San Bernardino pending additional psychiatric examinations.

Two psychiatrists found that Afshin Haghighi, a promising UC Irvine biology student, was insane when he attacked his mother April 1 at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point.

The killing capped a six-month period of mental unraveling during which Haghighi did not eat and took stimulants to stay awake studying for days at a stretch, according to his father and lawyers on both sides of the case.

Haghighi became delusional, convinced himself that his mother was trying to kill him by giving him sedatives, and believed he was meant to kill her too, said his attorney, Deputy Public Defender Carol Lavacot.

Zahra Haghighi died after her head was pounded on the asphalt.

“He still hasn’t totally dealt with the fact that he killed his mother. Today was real for him,” Lavacot said, fighting tears, after the court hearing.

Haghighi’s father said outside the courtroom that he hoped his son would get necessary treatment and might later be able to transfer to a private hospital.

“We support my son 100%. We know he was sick. He loves his mother and his mother loves him,” said the father, Ahmad Haghighi. “He was sick, definitely.”

Ahmad Haghighi said he was disappointed that his son had to plead guilty to second-degree murder, rather than a lesser charge of manslaughter, in exchange for the insanity plea.

But the prosecutor, saying there was no doubt Afshin Haghighi was insane at the time of the slaying, praised the arrangement to commit him to a hospital.

“It’s a good disposition. It’s a life lid and he’ll get treated at the same time,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Gary Paer said.

The insanity defense is seldom raised and it is rarely successful, said defense attorney Jack M. Earley, who convinced a jury last year that a San Clemente man was insane when he killed his own mother.

Earley said cases such as this one, in which prosecutors, defense lawyers and psychiatrists agree a defendant is insane, are very rare.

“Those cases come through the system once a year, once every two years,” Earley said. “Those are the cases where the district attorney sees the handwriting on the wall and knows what the result is going to be.”

By all accounts, Afshin Haghighi, who was preparing to take his medical school entrance exam, was acting strangely for months before the slaying.

Distraught over the deaths of two friends in an Arizona car crash last September, Afshin Haghighi and some friends took psychedelic mushrooms but had a “horrible trip,” Lavacot said.

Afshin Haghighi decided then to hurl himself into his studies and withdrew to his books, staying up for three days at a time with the help of over-the-counter stimulants. He stopped eating and became paranoid when his mother, a registered nurse, tried to give him sedatives, Paer said. Haghighi flushed the pills down the toilet, the prosecutor said.

The paranoia erupted two days before the killing.

Afshin Haghighi ran away from home in fear after believing the family’s house was about to be fired upon by a passing car, and spent a night sleeping under a freeway overpass. He was spotted by police wandering on the freeway and returned home, according to Lavacot. During a drive to the beach with his mother, memories of a Franz Kafka story convinced Haghighi to kill her, Lavacot said.

Afshin Haghighi drove to San Diego and was arrested after allegedly robbing a service station. That case is pending.

Lavacot said Afshin Haghighi was not aware he had killed his mother, and she later broke the news to him in jail.

“He’s not a killer. He’s a lover. And he’s a lover of everybody,” Lavacot said.

Ahmad Haghighi said it was agonizing losing his wife at the hands of his own son.

“It’s too much pain for me. I’ll never forget my wife at all in my life,” he said. “My wife was a very lovely woman.”