In the early morning hours of Thursday, August 26, 2021, police in West Covina were called to the back of a shopping center on East Amar Road. Witnesses had heard an argument, then the sound of a vehicle leaving. When officers arrived at about 2:38 a.m., they found a man lying unresponsive on the ground in the rear parking lot. He died at the scene. He was later identified by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner as Douglas David Kim, 53, who died from blunt force trauma near 1532 E. Amar Road.
According to a West Covina Police Department statement reported by SGV City Watch, investigators preliminarily believed that Kim had been struck by a vehicle as it left the rear lot of the shopping center after an altercation. "Witnesses heard an altercation and a vehicle leaving the area. Upon arrival an adult male was found unresponsive on the ground in the rear parking lot of a shopping center," the department said. Officers tried to save him but could not. The Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide, and the case stayed with West Covina police detectives.
Police did not publicly describe the vehicle or its driver, and they did not say what the argument was about or whether Kim knew the people involved. No later update on the investigation could be found. The early account leaves open whether the driver hit him deliberately, struck him while fleeing the fight, or was someone other than the person he had argued with.
East Amar Road is a busy commercial and residential street running along the southern side of West Covina, a suburb of about 110,000 people in the San Gabriel Valley about 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The 1500 block is lined with strip shopping centers whose rear lots, used for deliveries and employee parking, are usually empty and dark in the middle of the night. Anyone who saw a vehicle pulling out of the back of a center on Amar Road in the early hours of that Thursday may hold a key piece of information.
His death came during a difficult stretch for the city. In the same year, West Covina police were also investigating the killing of Gabriela De Haro Perez, who was shot in a car-to-car shooting near Amar Road and Azusa Avenue in January 2021; in 2023 the city offered a $50,000 reward in that case, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported. No reward or public appeal connected to Douglas Kim's death could be found.
Kim's death drew only a short local report, and no follow-up story, arrest announcement or court case connected to it could be found in news archives or public records. More than four years later, the person who drove away from that parking lot has not, as far as the public record shows, been identified or charged. Anyone with information about his death can contact the West Covina Police Department at 626-939-8500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
