Family Speaks Out Over Christmas Day Shootings
GRAPEVINE (CBSDFW.COM) - Dr. Ali Rahmati saw the headline scroll across the bottom of television in London. Seven people killed west of Dallas, it said.
He knew there was a chance it might be his family.
Rahmati is the only brother of Zoreh and Nasrin Rahmati, the two women killed in the mass shooting Christmas Day.
He spoke publicly Thursday for the first time, and offered slightly different details about the events of that morning than police have described.
Rahmati said he spoke to all six family members who together in the Grapevine apartment Sunday morning.
While police have said they believe shooter Aziz Yazdanpanah arrived before some of the extended family, Rahmati said he was not there during the phone call.
There was no warning then, or in 30 years of visits though, according to Rahmati, that Yazdanpanah might be dangerous.
"What has motivated him, I think, he has been unemployed for 12 years," Rahmati said. "He had no future."
Rahmati said he had fronted the money that enabled his sister, niece Nona and nephew Ali to move out of their home and into an apartment.
It came only after bankruptcies for the Yazdanpanah family, foreclosures and years of losing power and water in their Colleyville home.
It was starting to affect the children at school, he said.
"Children were not doing very well at the time when they were living together," said Rahmati.
Still, Rahmati said there were no problems with Aziz Yazdanpanah.
He had a key to the apartment and would come by often to visit his son, Rahmati said.
The murders left him with just one living sister, in Iran.
Still, he said he has no hate for his brother-in-law.
Instead he took the opportunity to question American gun laws contribution to the crime.
"To American lawmakers in Washington, please, please change the gun law, or stop it. This never happens in England, a man essentially executing his own close families."
