Andres Enrique Cubias was 37 years old when he died on Friday, Sept. 24, 2004, in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma. The public record does not give the address where he was hurt. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It gave his age, listed him as a Latino man and noted the cause of death. It did not name a neighborhood or a street, did not say how he was hurt or who found him, and did not say whether investigators had any idea who was responsible. No follow-up story appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Andres Enrique Cubias 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 surname is not a common one in the United States, yet the only other people with the name who turned up in searches were a teenager killed in Florida in 2023 and a man named in a property notice abroad, neither of them connected to his death.
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 one geographic clue is the agency. Because the case belongs to the LAPD's Rampart Division, he was most likely hurt somewhere in the area that division serves, though that is an inference rather than a published fact.
The Rampart Division covers a densely populated stretch of the city just west of downtown Los Angeles, including Westlake and the area around MacArthur Park, Pico-Union and parts of Echo Park and Silver Lake. It is one of the most crowded parts of Los Angeles, filled with older apartment buildings, busy sidewalks, street vendors and small shops. For decades it has been a first home for many immigrant families, especially from Mexico and Central America.
Los Angeles still recorded roughly 480 to 520 homicides a year in the mid-2000s, and many of those killings were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Andres Enrique Cubias could be found in news archives or public records. More than 21 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 37-year-old man named Andres Enrique Cubias in the Westlake, Pico-Union or Echo Park areas in September 2004 may hold information that could help. 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.
