‘They Are Going to Kill Me, Mom ... ‘

Weeks before Raul Tinajero, the state’s star witness in a murder case, was strangled in the Los Angeles County Jail, he told his mother that he feared for his life.

“Mom, I’m afraid,” he told her tearfully in a phone call from the Men’s Central Jail. “They are going to kill me, Mom, cause I went to court.”

Silvia Tinajero said she told him not to be scared, to trust in God and to always tell the truth.

Despite a judge’s order that Tinajero get special protection while in jail, he was strangled in his cell April 20. The man he testified against, Santiago Pineda, is the prime suspect, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca.

In her first public comments since the killing, Silvia Tinajero said Tuesday that she forgives her son’s killers, but cannot forgive those who failed to protect him.

“I don’t want nothing to happen to the guys, whoever did this,” said Tinajero, a native of Mexico, “just to the people who was in charge with the custody of my son.”

She said she will sue Los Angeles County, alleging wrongful death and negligence. Her attorney, Hermez Moreno, said Raul Tinajero “was complying with his civic duties as a witness in the aid of the prosecution against a horrendous murderer ... and he’s dead.

“There are a lot of questions that need to be answered.”

Baca, who runs the county’s jails and opened an investigation last week, has apologized, calling Tinajero’s homicide disturbing.

Members of the county Board of Supervisors have called for a broader examination of why Tinajero was not protected. Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky called for an independent inquiry. Supervisor Mike Antonovich wants a grand jury investigation.

Inmates in protective custody are classified as “special handle” or “keep-away” when they enter the jail system, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Chief Chuck Jackson. They are kept in a different area of the jail or in a separate facility, away from those who may pose a threat. They sometimes are held in single cells, but because of a shortage of space, most today are kept in joint cells.

Tinajero, a convicted car thief who was in the County Jail after he testified against Pineda, called his mother half a dozen times between March 10 and April 11, she said.

In an interview Tuesday, Silvia Tinajero, 43, said her son expressed fear for his safety several times, beginning March 10, when Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard R. Romero ordered the Sheriff’s Department to keep Tinajero in protective custody.

The same day, the judge ordered Tinajero to testify in exchange for immunity from prosecution, according to court documents. He had previously refused to cooperate out of fear of self-incrimination.

In a phone conversation that night, Tinajero, 20, tearfully described the judge’s action.

His mother’s advice was simple, she said: “Tell the truth.” A Seventh-day Adventist, she said she prayed for him.

Tinajero told his mother that he had seen three of Pineda’s friends in the County Jail. He also told her that deputies changed his wristband from white, the color worn by the general inmate population, to blue. Blue signifies inmates who pose a risk of escape, who have mental health problems, or who are under protective order, according to sheriff’s officials.

Tinajero told her son: “See, you don’t have to worry. There are people who are going to be watching you.”

In a call March 24, Tinajero continued to express misgivings about testifying. Then, between March 26 and April 1, he was transferred to North Kern State Prison in Delano before being returned to the Men’s Central Jail, where Pineda was being held. Beginning April 6, Tinajero testified for two days in court, telling jurors that he saw Pineda kill Rafael Sanchez in 2002. The trial was aborted April 12 when Pineda’s attorney became ill. About that time, he got in a fight with an inmate who tried to rob him, Tinajero told his mother. He told his girlfriend that deputies ordered him to sleep on the floor of his single cell in his underwear, Silvia Tinajero said. At some point before his murder, he was transferred to a cell with other inmates.

The day after Tinajero’s death, two investigators informed her that her son had been slain in jail. “I knew it,” she said. “They were going to kill my son.”

Moreno has demanded videotapes, transcripts of interviews with witnesses and statements from deputies who were working that night and those in charge of classification. He said he believes he can prove negligence on the part of jail officials who failed to protect the witness.

“In this case, we had at least the fact he was a witness to a murder incarcerated in the same holding area where the murderer is located,” he said.

Silvia Tinajero, who works as a manager at Kmart, said she raised Raul and two other children by herself. She said Tinajero started getting into trouble while he was in middle school.

He was convicted this year of stealing a car and sent to state prison. He was expected to be released in May and planned to get married, his mother said.

No monetary award could fill the emotional hole left by the death of her son, she said.

“My life is now broken in pieces,” she said. “It’s not right what happened.”