Jose Henriquez was 45 years old when he died on Sunday, Aug. 8, 2004, in West Adams. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 3020 S. La Brea Ave. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's Southwest 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 placed his death in West Adams. It did not say how he was hurt, who found him, whether the address was a home, a business or a spot on the street, or whether investigators had identified anyone they wanted to question. No follow-up story appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Jose Henriquez 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. Jose Henriquez is a very common name in Spanish-speaking communities, and searches turned up dozens of men who share it, none of them shown to be 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 address places his death on La Brea Avenue, one of the main north-south streets of the city's Westside and South Los Angeles. In this stretch the avenue is lined with small businesses, apartment buildings and auto shops, and it carries heavy traffic through much of the day and night. Nothing in the record says whether he lived nearby or was only passing through on a Sunday in early August.
West Adams is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a fashionable district of Victorian and Craftsman homes. Many of those houses survive today. For decades it has been home to black and Latino working and middle-class families. The LAPD's Southwest Division handles cases here.
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 Jose Henriquez 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 lived, worked or spent time near the 3000 block of South La Brea Avenue in August 2004, or who knew a 45-year-old man named Jose Henriquez, 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.
