A Lynn man has been found guilty of murdering 24-year-old pizza delivery driver Mohammedreza “Sina” Zangiband during a North Shore crime spree in 2017 that brought with it a slew of other charges, including the rape of a North Andover convenience store clerk, for which he was also convicted.
A Salem Superior Court jury on Friday found Brian Brito, 27, of Lynn, guilty of murder, aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, armed robbery while masked and while carrying a firearm, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury, armed assault with intent to murder, and unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Judge Jeffrey Karp scheduled sentencing for July 12.
“The brutality of these crimes has changed many lives forever but justice was served through a tremendous group effort by our trial team, victim witness staff and investigators with units across the community,” Essex District Attorney Paul Tucker said in a statement following the verdict.
“This was a difficult case for many reasons but this defendant will now face the consequences of his actions.”
The crime spree took place over several hours from Lynn to North Andover and Lawrence, the Herald reported at the time.
The crime spree began when Brito gunned Zangiband down on Bowler Street in Lynn at around 6 p.m. on March 27, 2017, as the victim was out delivering pizzas for the local Atha’s Pizza business, according to previous Herald reporting.
“I heard four shots and then screeching wheels,” a 61-year-old neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Herald. “My son looked out and saw a car with the driver’s side window shot out.”
But Brito was initially charged with what he did around four hours later, when he robbed a North Andover convenience store and raped the female clerk at gunpoint while he was in the middle of it. It was something he allegedly said while raping this woman that first made him a “person of interest” in Zangiband’s murder.
“Thank you for making this easy,” Brito, then a resident of Manchester, N.H., told his rape victim, according to a North Andover police report. “I had to kill someone today that made it hard. I am going to leave you some money.”
He then allegedly stuffed one of his naked-from-the-waist-down victim’s shoes with one-dollar bills before he himself made off with roughly $500 from the store’s money box and all of the lottery scratch tickets from the counter.
About 20 minutes later, police spotted his gray Audi — which they had been on the lookout for since the Bowler Street shooting. They pulled him over, hauled him out and cuffed him.
State Police spokesman David Procopio said that the arresting troopers found the black pistol, loaded with a round in the chamber, in the killer’s inside jacket pocket as well as an additional magazine and a box of ammunition in his sweatpants pockets.
Zangiband — who was born in Iran and had moved to the U.S. at age 13 and graduated from Lynn Classical High School — had high-flying plans for his future.
He had invested “hundreds of hours” in aviation school in Central Florida and dreamed of one day being a commercial pilot, friends and family told reporters. But he also liked fast cars, and rented dozens of muscle cars a year — logging a 60-hour workweek to fund his hobby.
“We were going to rent him a Lamborghini for his birthday,” Zangiband’s brother-in-law, who identified himself to Herald reporters then as simply “Ryan,” said, noting the victim would have turned 25 the next week.
