Felix Luis Dominguez Escundero was 78 years old when he died on Thursday, August 26, 2021, in Lincoln Heights, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma near 1929 Hancock Street. His death was ruled a homicide, and the case was assigned to homicide detectives of the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Bureau.
He was a Latino man in the last years of a long life. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no news outlet reported on his death. The LAPD, which posts pages for many homicide victims asking the public for help, has no page for him that could be found, and no press release about the case was located.
That leaves almost every question about his death open. The public record does not say whether he was attacked inside a home or on the street, whether he was robbed, whether he knew the person who hurt him, or whether he died right away or after days in a hospital. When an older person dies of blunt force injuries, the cause can range from a beating to a push that led to a fatal fall, and the Medical Examiner's ruling of homicide means only that his death was caused by another person. It does not, by itself, explain how.
Lincoln Heights lies just northeast of downtown Los Angeles, across the Los Angeles River, and is one of the city's oldest residential neighborhoods, dating to the 1870s. Its streets hold Victorian-era houses, small apartment buildings and the businesses along North Broadway, and for generations it has been home to working-class Mexican American families. Older residents like him have often lived on the same block for decades, and neighbors in such places tend to know one another and to notice when something is wrong. That makes it more likely that someone saw or heard something around Hancock Street in late August 2021.
The city of Los Angeles recorded 397 homicides in 2021, the most since 2006, according to the Los Angeles Times. Most of those killings were shootings of young men. The death of a 78-year-old man is far less common, and attacks on older people tend to draw public outrage when they become known. His did not become known at all, at least not in any news coverage that could be found.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Felix Luis Dominguez Escundero could be found in news archives or public records. More than four years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible for the death of this elderly man in his own neighborhood. Anyone who knew him, or who was near Hancock Street in Lincoln Heights around August 26, 2021, may hold information that matters. Anyone with information can call the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
