Armando Cabada was 29 years old when he died on Monday, March 1, 2010. 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 first logged the case under the label of a John Doe, which suggests that he was not identified right away. It later recorded his name, his age, his gender, the date of his death and the cause, and nothing more.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Armando Cabada 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.
Searches for his name are dominated by a far more prominent man. Armando Cabada Alvidrez, a longtime television news anchor in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was elected mayor of that city in 2016, and hundreds of news stories quote him on crime, the border and the pandemic. None of those records have anything to do with the 29-year-old man who died in Los Angeles County in 2010, and they bury any trace he may have left.
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 Armando Cabada could be found in news archives or public records. More than 15 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 March 2010, 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.
