During the final days of December 2003, fourteen-year-old Marisol Hernandez spent the post-Christmas holiday at home surrounded by family, playing board games like Monopoly with several of her eleven siblings. On the afternoon of Saturday, December 27, the Hispanic teenager told her parents that she was heading out to spend time with a girlfriend. Instead, she ended up at a gathering inside an abandoned apartment building located in the Vermont Knolls neighborhood of South Los Angeles, near the 900 block of West 84th Street. What was meant to be an evening among peers quickly spiraled into a devastating tragedy.
Witnesses later reported that young people had gathered in the vacant South Los Angeles apartment for an underground party where alcohol flowed freely. During the night, Marisol consumed rum with acquaintances until she became severely incapacitated and passed out face down on a couch in the living room. According to accounts given to detectives, a twenty-two-year-old acquaintance named David Ponce approached the unconscious girl. An associate of Ponce reported walking into the room shortly after and seeing Ponce standing over Marisol while adjusting his clothing. Another partygoer later admitted to touching her while she lay unresponsive.
When partygoers woke the following morning, Sunday, December 28, they found Marisol lying motionless and cold to the touch on the blood-soaked couch, her jeans pulled down. Realizing she was unresponsive, those present panicked. Rather than waiting inside, they lifted her body from the abandoned apartment and carried her outside, laying her onto a concrete driveway. Emergency medical personnel were summoned to the scene, but paramedics were unable to revive her and pronounced her dead where she lay on the pavement. Her mother was subsequently called to the neighborhood and arrived to find her young daughter deceased.
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner examined Marisol and ruled her death a homicide. Pathologists determined that she died from alcohol intoxication, asphyxia, and other undetermined factors, noting that she likely suffocated while lying face down during a violent sexual assault. Her blood-alcohol level was registered at 0.45 percent, an amount that could independently prove lethal for a girl of her stature. The examination also documented severe genital trauma, noting heavy bleeding resulting from the assault. Biological evidence recovered from her body was compared against acquaintances who were present, eliminating one individual who admitted to touching her.
Homicide investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department 77th Street Division sought to interview Ponce, who was unemployed and known to frequent underground gatherings in the local area. When detectives attempted to trace him, they discovered that his family had relocated from their residence, leaving rental tenants behind, and neighbors reported that he had completely vanished from the neighborhood. Detectives presented their investigative findings to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, but prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence to secure an arrest warrant. As a result, no formal charges were filed, leaving detectives unable to apprehend him and causing the investigation to stall.
The death of Marisol Hernandez occurred during a particularly violent era in South Los Angeles, where the 77th Street Division regularly handled heavy caseloads involving youth violence and neighborhood homicides. More than two decades have elapsed since Marisol was carried onto the driveway on West 84th Street, and her mother continues to plead for accountability for the individuals responsible for violating and abandoning her daughter. With the primary suspect never apprehended or questioned and the case lingering among cold case files, authorities remain dependent on any surviving witnesses or community members with knowledge of the night to finally come forward and bring resolution to the family.
