On May 20, 2012, the body of 45-year-old Dwight Henry was found in the backseat of a white Chevrolet Trailblazer parked outside the Alpine Village beer hall in Torrance, California. The Los Angeles County coroner listed the cause of death as strangulation; investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide unit responded to the scene and identified signs of a physical struggle, though the coroner's initial exam did not immediately reveal an obvious weapon.
Henry was a Black male who had lived in the Hyattsville/Laurel area of Prince George's County, Maryland, for about two decades after being born in Jamaica. According to reporting and sheriff's investigators, he had traveled to California and called on the Friday before his death to say he was in Los Angeles. The SUV in which he was found had been borrowed from a former girlfriend who lived in Georgia roughly three weeks earlier. Henry was described by acquaintances as an avid soccer player; he was wearing a distinctive elephant-tooth pendant necklace when his body was discovered.
Los Angeles County detectives and Maryland law-enforcement contacts conducted follow-up inquiries to learn why Henry had traveled to Southern California and who he might have been meeting. Public appeals asked anyone who knew Henry's whereabouts or reasons for the trip to contact homicide detectives; the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department number listed in contemporaneous reports was 323-890-5500. News coverage from May-August 2012 summarized the limited leads and the investigators' hope that people who knew Henry in Maryland might provide critical information.
As of the last records and news coverage located, there has been no public announcement of an arrest, charge, conviction, or case closure in Henry's death; the case remains unsolved and detectives continue to seek information.
