MACDONALD'S FORMER DEALER DIDN'T BELIEVE HE'D INFORM

He says his operation was only for their personal use.MacDonald provided
some supplies.

SANTA ANA- Daryl Hood brushed off the warning he got that one of his
drug-dealing buddies had told police about the homemade methamphetamine lab
in his bedroom.

Chad MacDonald inform on me? he wondered.

"No way!"

Three days later, Hood and another suspected dealer, Ryan McGreevey, were
in jail.

"He shouldn't have ratted on me," Hood said in a jailhouse interview
Friday. "But he didn't deserve to die. He was just a young kid who was
probably scared and didn't know what he was getting into."

MacDonald, 17, was tortured inside a Norwalk house in March before being
strangled and dumped in an alley in south-central Los Angeles. His family
and friends blame police, who used him as an informant to make at least one
drug buy. Police said they had stopped using MacDonald as an informant and
his death resulted from his drug habit.

"I can tell you this, "Hood said. "He wouldn't have needed to go to Norwalk
if I was still on the street."

Hood said he and his friends bought only from each other. The group, he
said, consisted of three local dealers and several meth smokers. He said he
had never been to Norwalk.

Hood said he and MacDonald quickly became friends because of their shared
interest in drugs and partying.

"We weren't in it for the money at all," Hood said. "I learned how to cook
it from the Internet."

He said he and MacDonald were partners of sorts.

"Chad used to work at Thrifty's," he said. "He'd get me Sudafed pulls. Lots
of them. A few thousand."

In exchange, Hood gave him all the methamphetamine he could handle, more
than an ounce a week. They'd smoke it in his bedroom. Or take his kit to a
local motel and party there.

But then Hood got arrested. He said he didn't know for sure that MacDonald
was responsible. He said he heard rumors that MacDonald's girlfriend was
warning some of his closest friends to stay away from MacDonald.

But Hood said he had believed another buyer, a woman, might have reported
his drug lab to police.

"I cried when I read it in the paper that he was killed;" Hood said. "We
were really good friends."

But then the story broke about MacDonald being a police informant. He said
he knew then that MacDonald had at least some responsibility for his
arrest.

"I was actually kind of happy (that the arrest happened)," said Hood, who
pleaded guilty to drug charges and was sentenced to three years in prison.
"I'm going to appeal my case."