Rug merchant killed in failed robbery

Ebrahim Torbati was a rug merchant. But at heart, he was a poet.

The 71-year-old shop owner was killed in an apparent robbery attempt Tuesday afternoon as he read a newspaper at the entrance to his store at 840 Santee St. in the downtown Los Angeles garment district.

The robber may have grappled with him briefly before shooting him about 4:15 p.m., Torbati’s neighbors said.

Police said the suspect pointed a gun at Torbati and reached into the drawer in his desk where he kept cash. Torbati tried to keep the suspect from getting the money. Police later found the cash, still in the drawer.

The bullet struck Torbati in the neck, and he died shortly afterward at County-USC Medical Center, said Los Angeles Police Det. Doug Pierce.

The suspect is described as a black man, 25 to 30 years old, slim, 5 feet 6, wearing a gray cap and shirt. He ran to 8th Street and Maple Avenue and then got into a white Toyota Camry with two women, police said.

Torbati was a bachelor, an American originally from Tehran, said fellow merchant Fred Refa.

Like other Jewish Iranians of his generation, he left more than two decades ago at the time of the revolution to make a new life in the United States.

He was a rug merchant by necessity, Refa said, but he was also an educated man -- a poet, who wrote books in Farsi. Torbati had attended a university in Tehran, and “only sold rugs because of his situation in life,” Refa said.

Torbati had “a good attitude” and liked to joke with his customers, flattering the women with impromptu proposals of marriage, Refa added.

Central Division has had very few homicides this year, and the broad daylight shooting jarred police and merchants alike in the normally quiet garment district. Pierce of the LAPD said his entire unit was working on the case.

Refa and Torbati’s co-worker, Abraham Rafy, were anxious that their friend be remembered, despite having few family members in the area. They produced his books of poems, and tried to translate them from Farsi, but gave up. “It is very beautiful,” Refa said, “but it cannot be translated.”

Refa did, however, translate the title Torbati had given his book: “At Last, the Poem is Going to Kill Me.”

Anyone with information on the case is asked to call LAPD detectives at (213) 972-1254.

jill.leovy@latimes.com