Keith Preston was 27 years old when he died on Thursday, January 4, 2007, in the area the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report listed as Chinatown. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 450 Bauchet Street. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department case, handled by its Homicide Bureau.
The Homicide Report described him only as a black man of 27 and gave the address and date. It did not say what happened to him.
The address itself is the most important detail in the record. Bauchet Street, just north of downtown Los Angeles and near Union Station, is the site of the county's main jail complex, which includes Men's Central Jail and the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. The Sheriff's Department runs those jails, which would explain why the case belongs to the Sheriff's Homicide Bureau even though the address lies inside the city of Los Angeles. The location suggests that he may have been in custody when he was hurt, although the record does not say so directly.
If he was an inmate, his death would be one of the cases in which a person died while in the care of the county. The record does not say whether he was attacked by another inmate, injured during an encounter of some other kind, or hurt somewhere else and brought to the jail complex. It does not say whether he died inside the jail or later at a hospital, or whether investigators ever identified anyone responsible.
Beyond his name, his age and the address where he died, almost nothing about Keith Preston 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 shared by many men across the country, and searches for it return obituaries and records for people in Texas, Ohio, New York, Virginia and elsewhere, none of whom can be connected to his death.
The jail complex on Bauchet Street sits in a district of government buildings, rail yards and warehouses between Chinatown, Union Station and the Los Angeles River. The Twin Towers facility opened in the 1990s, and the complex as a whole has long been one of the largest jail systems in the United States, holding thousands of people awaiting trial or serving short sentences.
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 Keith Preston could be found in news archives or public records. More than 18 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was held in or worked at the jail complex on Bauchet Street in early January 2007, or who knew Keith Preston and heard about what happened to him, 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 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.
