SLAIN TEEN WAS EAGER TO INFORM, CHIEF SAYS

A judge allows police to release information on Chad MacDonald's case.

Chad Allen MacDonald and his mother were both eager participants in the
slain teen-ager's work as a drug informant for Brea police, Chief Bill
Lentini said Wednesday.

Lentini made that assertion after Juvenile Court Judge Ronald Owen ordered
the release of dozens of pages of documents about the case and ruled that
police and prosecutors could discuss it.

The records indicate that MacDonald, 17, was recruited as an informant by
Brea police after his Jan. 6 arrest for maethamphetamine possession. He
made one undercover, supervised drug buy Jan. 15 - six weeks before he was
strangled by suspected drug dealers - and also led police to a drug lab.

A Brea detective told the prosecutor in MacDonald's case that the teen
"owes him one more bust." Deputy District Attorney Kal Kaliban wrote in the
case file that he would drop charges if MacDonald provided sufficient help
to police.

But police say they ousted MacDonald as an informant Feb. 19 after he was
arrested again for possessing the drug. That means MacDonald was not
working for them March 1, when he went to a reputed drug house in Norwalk
and was tortured and slain, the chief said.

Lloyd Charton, the attorney for MacDonald's mother, contends that MacDonald
might be alive today if he had been prosecuted or placed in a drug
treatment program instead of becoming an informant.

Five days before MacDonald's death, Kaliban wrote that the teen "is
probably in real need of 'Breakthrough,'" the county's lockdown treatment
program.