Mental Care Ordered for Killer’s Companion

The companion of a man who killed a pizza delivery man in a bungled robbery was ordered Friday to serve five years’ probation in a mental institution.

San Fernando Superior Court Judge Dana Senit Henry ordered Brad T. Jensen, 20, of Arleta to serve his probationary sentence at Gateways Hospital, a locked mental facility in Los Angeles, after a diagnostic report concluded that Jensen needs psychological counseling.

Jensen, who could have been sentenced to as much as seven years in state prison, pleaded guilty in January to a single count of conspiracy to commit robbery in the Nov. 24, 1984 attack on Thai immigrant Chat Thanasinap.

Jensen’s companion, Elias Sanchez, earlier pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for killing Thanasinap with a single shot from a high-powered rifle as the 35-year-old deliveryman tried to run away. Sanchez told probation officials that he called a Pizza Man delivery store to come to the Arleta housing project where the shooting took place because “we got the munchies” and wanted to rob a deliveryman of his money and pizzas.

Sanchez was sentenced in February to 27 years to life in prison for the murder.

Jensen, a former sheet metal mechanic at a North Hollywood plant, told probation officers that he and Sanchez had been drinking beer for much of the evening and that he accompanied Sanchez during the commission of the crime.