Crime Story

Your species & its systems are the absolute worst. How was this violent piece of shit murderer on the street? How are any of you murdering monkeys allowed to roam free? Good fucking job, Orange County D.A.

A 44-year-old woman pleaded guilty Monday and was immediately sentenced to 200 hours of community service for helping her friend get away from the scene of a fatal stabbing in a Laguna Niguel bar.

Elizabeth Anne Thornburg pleaded guilty to a felony count of being an accessory after the fact. She accepted a plea deal from Orange County Superior Court Judge Andre Manssourian, according to court records.

Thornburg was placed on two years of formal probation and ordered to perform the community service at a location “focused on racial sensitivity,” according to court records.

Co-defendant Craig Matthew Tanber was sentenced in February 2020 to 56 years to life in prison for killing 22-year-old Shayan Mazroei at Patsy’s Irish Pub Sept. 6, 2015.

The deadly conflict with Mazroei started when Thornburg got into a dispute with the victim. Mazroei had been playing billiards with friends when he stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and got into an argument with her, Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark Birney said in Tanber’s trial.

Thornburg shared “her views of Persians and of people from the Middle East” with Mazroei and spit at him, Birney said.

Mazroei, in turn, “spit on her three or four times” as he walked back into the bar, prompting Thornburg to chase him, the prosecutor said.

Mazroei appealed to bar security guard Mark Fillingham for help as an “upset and enraged” Thornburg chased him around the pool table, Birney said.

Fillingham told Thornburg to leave the bar as Tanber exited the bathroom, Birney said. Just after midnight, Fillingham told the couple “they’re not coming back into the bar,” according to the prosecutor, who said two bar patrons saw Tanber “ranting” about “having a knife and wanting to stab someone.”

A bartender summoned Fillingham for help with another issue, leaving Tanber unattended at the door, according to Birney, who said the defendant opened the door and yelled “`You!’ as he motions to Shayan.”

Mazroei “casually” walked over to the door and Tanber struck him “with a very strong left-hand punch” to the face, then plunged a knife into his heart and left shoulder blade, Birney said.

Mazroei “stumbled” back into the bar and collapsed, and was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, he said.

Tanber ran away and deputies later found his windbreaker and the knife, he said.

In the moments before the stabbing, Tanber was heard by witnesses saying, “No one disrespects my girl,” he said.

Tanber was also heard referring to the victim with a slur against people of Middle Eastern descent and threatening to “teach him my way of correction from the penitentiary,” Birney said.

Thornburg was charged with being an accessory after the fact for picking up Tanber in the area and giving him a ride to her Mission Viejo home.

Tanber was free on parole at the time he killed Mazroei. He had been charged with murder in the April 4, 2004, beating death of 26-year-old Cory Lamons in Huntington Beach, but struck a plea deal with prosecutors after a mistrial was declared when an alternate juror Googled a co-defendant and shared the information with other panelists.

Tanber pleaded guilty Feb. 2, 2007, to voluntary manslaughter and admitted a sentencing enhancement for committing the crime to benefit a street gang, according to court records. He also pleaded guilty to dissuading a witness by force, street terrorism and assault with a deadly weapon or force likely to produce great bodily injury, and was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Stupid woman seems to have started the whole thing as well as been an accessory, why does she get off so easily? Give her 20 yrs. She won't cause more trouble when she's out.

[All here; don't arse yourself.]