Ommer Ganaway was 90 years old when he died on Friday, March 2, 2018, in the Vermont Knolls neighborhood of South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma near 8032 S. Vermont Ave. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department South Bureau Homicide case.
Ommer Ganaway was born on March 22, 1927, according to his memorial on Find a Grave, which means he was less than three weeks from his 91st birthday. He was buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery. The coroner's records describe him as a Black man.
The Los Angeles Times reported what police believed had happened. "A person in the area found Ganaway on the sidewalk around 5:30 a.m. and called police," Los Angeles Police Det. Chris Barling said. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 5:45 a.m., according to coroner's records.
"Police think Ganaway was walking home from a friend's house around 3 a.m. when he was confronted by a person who beat him and took a duffel bag he was carrying," Barling said.
That account suggests that he lay on the sidewalk for as long as two and a half hours before anyone found him. It also suggests that he was still independent at 90, well enough to visit a friend and make his own way home through the neighborhood in the middle of the night. Whoever attacked him beat a man of 90 for whatever was inside a duffel bag and left him on the street.
His name is unusual, and his memorial is the only other public record of him that could be found. No obituary or family fundraiser appears to have been published online.
Vermont Knolls is a residential neighborhood in South Los Angeles, made up mostly of single-family homes and small apartment buildings, with Vermont Avenue running through it as one of the main commercial corridors of South Los Angeles. Along Vermont are small markets, liquor stores, churches, auto shops and fast-food restaurants, and buses run along the avenue at all hours. At 3 a.m. the street would have been quiet, but not empty.
A man born in 1927 had lived through the Depression, the Second World War and nearly a century of change in Los Angeles. His friend, his neighbors and the people who saw him walking along Vermont Avenue may remember more than has been made public. Los Angeles recorded about 260 homicides a year in 2018 and 2019, among the lowest yearly totals in more than half a century, yet many of those killings still went unsolved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Ommer Ganaway could be found in news archives or public records. More than seven years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was near the 8000 block of South Vermont Avenue in the early morning of March 2, 2018, or who later saw someone with a duffel bag that did not belong to them, may hold information that could help. Detectives asked anyone with information to call them at 786-5113. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a vehicle seen nearby or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. 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.
