Clark Hellstern was 26 years old when he died on Sunday, June 28, 2020, after falling from the 12th floor of an apartment tower at Park La Brea, the large apartment complex in the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died from blunt force trauma near 350 South Fuller Avenue, and his death was ruled a homicide. The case was handled by the Los Angeles Police Department's West Bureau Homicide Unit.
Hellstern was a white man in his mid-20s. No obituary or memorial page for him could be found for this story. His death was reported briefly by the Beverly Press, a local newspaper, in July 2020.
According to that report, police responded to Tower 36 at 350 South Fuller Avenue and found him unresponsive on the ground. Bystanders were trying to give him CPR when first responders arrived, and Los Angeles Fire Department personnel pronounced him dead at the scene. Witnesses told police that before the fall, Hellstern had been hanging from a window and shouting. Detective Sean Kinchla of West Bureau Homicide said that nobody else was inside the apartment when police searched it.
At the time, police said they did not know what led up to the fall. "Because authorities did not witness the events leading up to the incident and there is uncertainty about what occurred, a thorough investigation must be conducted," the Beverly Press reported. Detectives said they would use witness accounts and any available security camera footage to determine exactly what happened. The Medical Examiner later ruled the death a homicide, meaning that another person's actions were found to have caused it. No public explanation of that finding could be found.
That leaves troubling questions. Why was a 26-year-old man hanging from a 12th-floor window and shouting? Was he trying to escape someone, or something, inside the apartment? Who else had been there that day, and where did they go before police arrived? A homicide ruling in a fall is unusual, and it suggests investigators found evidence that someone else was involved.
Park La Brea is one of the largest apartment complexes west of the Mississippi, with thousands of residents living in its garden apartments and 13-story towers between Third Street and Beverly Boulevard, next to The Grove and the Farmers Market. Its towers are home to people of every age, and a fall from one of them on a Sunday would have been seen by many people on the ground.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Clark Hellstern could be found in news archives or public records. More than six years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was at Park La Brea's Tower 36 on June 28, 2020, or who knew Clark and saw him in the days before his death, may hold information that could help. 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.
