Rutilio Martinez Lopez was 37 years old when he died on Sunday, Oct. 12, 2014, in Westlake. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma in the area of 647 S. Alvarado St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Rampart Division case.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Rutilio Martinez Lopez 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.
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. The coroner's location is given only as "the area of" an address on Alvarado Street, which suggests that he may have been found outdoors or that the exact spot was uncertain, but the record does not explain.
Lopez and Martinez are among the most common surnames in Los Angeles, though the first name Rutilio is much less common. Searches for his full name returned only government lists from Mexico and unrelated people, including a San Diego man who died in 2013 at the age of 90. None of them could be connected to the man who died in Westlake in 2014, and no news outlet appears to have reported his death.
Westlake lies just west of downtown Los Angeles and is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the city. It is home to MacArthur Park, with its lake and long history as a gathering place, and Alvarado Street is one of the neighborhood's main corridors, lined with small shops, street vendors, bus stops and apartment buildings, with a Metro subway station nearby. Its sidewalks are busy at nearly all hours. That constant foot traffic means that people may well have been nearby when Rutilio Lopez was hurt.
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. Without a published description of what happened, people who saw a fight or heard a commotion may never have realized that it ended in a death.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Rutilio Martinez Lopez could be found in news archives or public records. More than 11 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Someone who knew Rutilio Lopez, or who lived, worked or spent time along Alvarado Street in Westlake in October 2014 and remembers a man who was beaten or badly hurt, may hold information that detectives still need. 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.
