Gary Allen Dubin was 50 years old when he died on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006, in Lake Balboa. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 7085 Havenhurst Ave. His death was ruled a homicide. The Homicide Report lists the agency for the case under the code LAFD, and Lake Balboa lies within the city of Los Angeles, where homicides are investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department.
The record lists him as a white man and gives the street address where he was fatally hurt. It offers no description of what happened there.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Gary Allen Dubin 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 also belongs to Gary Dubin, the former child actor known for "The Partridge Family" and the voice of a kitten in "The Aristocats," who died of cancer in 2016, so searches for the name lead almost entirely to someone else.
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.
Lake Balboa is a neighborhood in the central San Fernando Valley, within the city of Los Angeles. It takes its name from the lake in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, a large stretch of parkland, playing fields and wildlife reserve along the Los Angeles River that draws walkers, cyclists and anglers. Much of the neighborhood is made up of single-family homes, apartment buildings and commercial strips along busy Valley boulevards. Havenhurst Avenue is one of the residential streets that run north and south through the area.
Los Angeles still recorded roughly 480 to 520 homicides a year in the mid-2000s, and many of those killings were never solved.
At 50, Gary Allen Dubin had lived long enough to build a life, with relatives, friends, neighbors or coworkers who would have known him by sight and by name. The address on Havenhurst Avenue is specific, and whoever lived or worked near it in January 2006 may recall something about the man or the day he was hurt.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Gary Allen Dubin could be found in news archives or public records. More than 19 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived in the 7000 block of Havenhurst Avenue in Lake Balboa in January 2006, or who knew a 50-year-old man named Gary Dubin in the San Fernando Valley, may be able to help fill in what the public record leaves out. 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.
