Timothy Ruiz was an infant, less than a year old, when he died on Friday, May 13, 2011, in North Hills in the San Fernando Valley. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 15115 Parthenia Street. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case handled by the department's Abused Child Unit in the North Valley.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report gave only the most basic facts: his name, the fact that he was a Latino boy, his age, the date of his death, the address and the cause. It did not say how he was hurt, who was caring for him at the time, or whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital. The assignment of the case to the Abused Child Unit, which investigates the deaths and serious injuries of young children, suggests that detectives looked closely at the people responsible for his care, but no result of that investigation has been made public.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Timothy 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. His name is a common one, and searches turned up only adults who share it, among them a police officer, an attorney and men in other states.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether he was injured at home or somewhere else, whether the injury happened on the day he died or earlier, or whether anyone was ever questioned or identified as a suspect. Deaths of infants from blunt force trauma are among the hardest cases for investigators, because there are often no outside witnesses and the only people present are the adults in the home.
North Hills is a residential neighborhood in the central San Fernando Valley. For decades it was known as Sepulveda, and residents voted to adopt the North Hills name in the early 1990s. It is a working-class area of single-family homes, apartment complexes and busy commercial streets, and it is home to many young families. Parthenia Street is one of the long east-west streets that cross the Valley, lined with homes, apartments, small businesses and churches.
Homicides in Los Angeles fell steeply in the late 2000s and early 2010s, yet many killings from those years were never solved. The death of an infant boy in the San Fernando Valley was recorded in the Homicide Report with only a single sentence.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Timothy Ruiz could be found in news archives or public records. More than 14 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. A baby cannot speak for himself, and the people who know what happened to him are the adults who were around him in the spring of 2011. Relatives, neighbors, caregivers or anyone who visited the home on Parthenia Street around May 2011 may hold information that could help detectives give Timothy the answers his short life deserves. 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.
