2017 death of student remains a mystery
It has been a year since 18-year-old college student Shayan Mortazavi was found dead on the ground at Mizner Park, one of Boca Raton’s most trendy shopping spots. But we may never know exactly what killed him.
His parents suspect foul play, even though investigators found no evidence of that. The police believe he either fell or deliberately jumped from the top of a six-level parking garage. And the teen’s cellphone, which may hold crucial answers, has proven next to impossible to unlock.
A medical examiner found
Shayan Mortazavi died of blunt force injuries, but left undetermined how the teen died.
Over the past year, investigators figured out a lot about his final moments. Here’s what they uncovered.
A trip to Mizner
Mortazavi, of New Jersey, was a freshman at Lynn University who had expressed an interest in film and journalism.
About 6 a.m. April 14, 2017, a Friday, security workers found Mortazavi’s body in the back of a parking garage at Mizner.
Police retraced the teen’s last day by relying on surveillance video, his credit card payments and witness accounts, among other evidence.
At lunchtime the day before, he entered and left the university cafeteria alone. Next, video surveillance showed him going to the school library by himself, and leaving alone two-and-a-half hours later. He went to his dorm. And he left campus in an Uber to go to a Boca restaurant on Powerline Road, where he ate a $36 meal.
He took an Uber to go to a 7:30 p.m. showing of the movie “The Fate of the Furious.” After the movie, he made two purchases at Starbucks at Mizner Park.
He was last seen on camera at 12:37 a.m., alone and trying to open locked doors to an office building within Mizner Park.
He then walked toward the west side of the shopping center, where he died.
An employee at one of the businesses told police that someone who looked like Mortazavi had passed by the shop a few times at one point that night, talking to himself and acting strangely as the shop was closing.
His college roommate told police the teen had been a loner with few friends, and the roommate said he barely knew him.
And yet Mortazavi approached total strangers for on-camera pranks, in addition to making provocative posts online. Mortazavi referred to himself online as “YouTube's ONLY Iranian American prankster.” His videos, some of them recorded at Mizner Park, drew thousands of views online on YouTube.
He once filmed himself pretending to be a Fox News reporter. In that video, Mortazavi approached random strangers and persisted as his subjects tried to stop him from talking to them.
“Who did you vote for?” he asked one man in a video, which was uploaded Nov. 11, 2016.
“Why should I tell you?” the man replies.
“Because I want to know.” The man asked Mortazavi why he didn’t ask permission to record him and the teen was ready with an answer.
“I don’t need to ask your permission,” he said. “You’re on public property.”
Drawing concern
Some of his online posts drew police’s attention. He contacted Boca Raton police via Facebook to say someone had threatened him.
In two instances, one on Sept. 8, 2016, and another on Dec. 15, 2016, police instructed him to visit the police department to make an official report about the threats, but he never followed through, a police report said.
Police examined a thread of what the teen had called threats, but concluded the posts weren’t really threats.
Meanwhile, a Texas man had found Mortazavi’s online postings threatening. That man contacted Boca Raton police about them 13 days before his death.
Boca Detective Rhanda White, who is also affiliated with the FBI through the Boca department’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, looked into it and found nothing to be concerned about.
City police, in turn, met with Lynn security officers about the situation.
On a President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence supporter online page, Mortazavi had written, “If ISIS and Israel attack the US I will bear arms and assist,” the report says.
Mortazavi told the campus police he only intended the comments to get attention in his role as a prankster, the report says.
A dean of students recalled meeting with Mortazavi along with his parents and stressing “the importance and dangers” of the teen’s online posts, a police report said.
The report didn’t specify a date for that meeting.
Mortazavi had drawn the attention of campus officials in February last year.
Campus security did a wellness check on Mortazavi after his roommate reported that he overheard him stating he would kill himself if he couldn’t fast enough. Looking through his laptop, police found two references to suicide in 2015.
The teen had been struggling to keep up his grades, a university official told police.
Mortazavi, who stuttered, favored communicating with people by texting them or most likely using apps, the college dean told police.
Rabbi Moshe Liberow, who runs the Boca Raton Chabad Student Center, said the teenager was enthusiastic and helpful as he attended several dinners at the center.
He recalled how he was the first to help volunteer to clean up the floor.
Liberow said Mortazavi stood out because few students of nationalities historically hostile to Israel and Judaism have actually visited the student center, geared toward Orthodox Judaism.
But Mortazavi had found a home away from home so much he brought his mother and grandmother to visit, Liberow recalled.
“He was just a kind individual who seemed like he really appreciated life and, like all of us, was always looking for meaning,” Liberow said.
As the investigation progressed, Mortazavi’s mother told police that she had received several suspicious calls from someone claiming to be with the FBI. The telephone number had a 386 area code.
Boca police found that the number was registered to the FBI, but officials there told the police that no one from that office was attempting to phone Mortazavi’s mother.
Nothing appeared to come of that.
A locked device
Perhaps the key to figuring out what happened to the teen lies in his iPhone 6 Plus.
But no one has been able to unlock it.
The family did not have the teen’s passcode.
In May 2017, police asked a company with a proprietary unlocking method to try to unlock the phone and were told they needed to get a search warrant.
A search warrant was obtained that month, but five months later, the company told police they couldn’t do it.
Next, Boca police sent it to the FBI’s Miami field office after hearing they had an unlocking service.
Five months later, though, the phone was returned, still locked.
The Fort Lauderdale police took a crack at it last April, but returned it the next month after no success.
The teen’s parents met police in late May, but weren’t convinced of the investigation’s findings.
The police have since agreed to hold onto the iPhone in case “future technology” lets them unlock it one day, a report said.
Police classified the case as inactive after “having exhausted all leads,” reads a report.
Mortazavi’s mother declined to comment Friday.