Erickson Bustamante Torres was 54 years old when he died on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department case. The public record does not give an address, a neighborhood or a city where he was hurt.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded only the barest facts about him: his name, his age, his gender, the date of his death and the cause.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Erickson Bustamante Torres 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 an unusual one. Erickson is far more often a surname than a given name, while Bustamante and Torres are both common surnames, and the full name may have been written differently in other records, for example with a hyphen or with only one of the two last names. Searches for it are crowded by other people, such as a woman named Susan Erickson Torres who appears in obituary guestbooks and a museum executive in Dallas named Abigail Erickson-Torres. Nothing ties any of them to the 54-year-old man who died in 2012.
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 missing location is a large gap of its own. The Sheriff's Department patrols the unincorporated communities of Los Angeles County and also serves dozens of cities that contract with it for police services, from the Antelope Valley to the South Bay and the San Gabriel Valley. Because the Homicide Report entry names the sheriff's Homicide Bureau but not a place, it is not possible to say from the public record which of those communities he lived in, where he was found, or whether he died where he was hurt or later at a hospital.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Erickson Bustamante Torres could be found in news archives or public records. More than 13 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Somewhere in Los Angeles County there are people who knew him in February 2012, who saw him in his last days or who heard talk of what happened to him, and any of them may hold information that could help detectives. 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 contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
