The taxi driver allegedly kidnapped by three inmates who escaped an Orange County Jail last year was angered Wednesday by a cellphone video that questions his ordeal.
A series of photos shows him posing on a beach with two of the escaped inmates. He told his lawyer it was a week from which he may never emotionally recover.
"They took him to the beach and took picture what he supposed to do?" said his attorney Hoang Huy Tu.
In the video, Hossein Nayeri narrates the 15-minute video describing his version of how the trio escaped from a jail in Santa Ana in 2016.
"He's really a compassionate person who wanted no harm to others and to us," he says.
Nayeri says deputies made assumptions regarding their disappearance.
The video seen first on NBC4 shows Nayeri walking through module F. Inmates appear to ignore his cell phone recording.
The video shows the escape; a sawed off bunk bed post; a metal screen moved aside and Nayeri squeezing through a vent to freedom. The edited video shows stops allegedly in Santa Cruz, then San Francisco and finally inside the stolen white van where Jonathan Tieu holds a bottle of whiskey while Nayeri says they are eating bananas.
In a statement, Tom Dominguez, the president of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriff's, the union that represents the rank and file, said:
"It is difficult to comprehend the motivation behind the criminal defense attorney reportedly releasing this video, but we must remind the public and the media that the three jail inmates shown in the video were incarcerated at the time of the escape awaiting trial on various violent and heinous crimes, ranging from attempted murder and murder to the kidnapping and torture of a man who was burned, beaten and left bleeding in the desert after his penis was severed.
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"The jail escape was an unfortunate incident that clearly put the public in danger. For the defendants to make light of it is unsettling but what you might expect from criminals such as these and the criminal defense attorney involved."
