Alejandro Perez was 56 years old when he died on Saturday, December 10, 2016, in Wilmington, in the harbor area of Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at Anaheim Street and Gulf Avenue. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case handled by the department's South Traffic Division.
He was a Latino man in his mid-50s. Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Alejandro Perez has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no news outlet appears to have reported on the death. He surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record. His name is a very common one, and searches turned up only other men who share it in other places, among them a dancer and a Florida teacher.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether he was beaten in a fight, attacked by a stranger, assaulted indoors or on the street, or struck by a vehicle, all of which can lead to a finding of blunt force trauma. It does not say what time of day he was hurt, whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
One detail in the record offers a hint. The case was assigned to the LAPD's South Traffic Division rather than to a homicide unit, and traffic divisions investigate deadly collisions, including hit-and-run crashes, which coroners can rule homicides. That suggests a vehicle may have been involved in his death, perhaps a driver who struck him and did not stop, but the public record does not say so.
Wilmington is a working-class neighborhood on the northern edge of the Port of Los Angeles, one of the busiest container ports in the country. Its streets mix modest homes and apartment buildings with oil refineries, rail lines, truck yards and warehouses that serve the harbor, and big rigs move through the area day and night. Anaheim Street is one of Wilmington's main east-west corridors, carrying both local traffic and trucks headed to and from the port.
By the mid-2010s Los Angeles was recording roughly 250 to 300 homicides a year, among the lowest totals in decades, yet many of those killings still went unsolved. The death of a 56-year-old man at a Wilmington intersection received only a brief entry in the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Alejandro Perez could be found in news archives or public records. More than nine years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was near Anaheim Street and Gulf Avenue in Wilmington around December 10, 2016, who saw a collision or a damaged vehicle in the area, or who knew Alejandro, may hold information that could help investigators. 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.
