Kamerin Adesina was 1 year old when he died on Thursday, July 22, 2004, in Altadena. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 65 Reever Way. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
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 Black boy, and placed his death in Altadena. It did not say how he was hurt, who was caring for him at the time, who called for help 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 Kamerin Adesina 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 an uncommon one, yet searches for it turned up no other record of him at all, not even a grave listing.
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 death of a child this young from blunt force trauma is among the hardest kinds of cases for investigators and for the public to understand. A 1-year-old cannot defend himself, cannot run and cannot tell anyone what happened, so whatever took place depended entirely on the adults around him. Nothing in the public record says who those adults were, where he lived or whether the address on Reever Way was his home.
Altadena is an unincorporated community in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, just north of Pasadena. It is a largely residential place of single-family houses on tree-lined streets, with hiking trails climbing into the mountains above it, and for generations it has been home to a mix of working and middle-class families. Because it is not a city, law enforcement there is provided by the Sheriff's Department.
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 Kamerin Adesina 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 on or near Reever Way in Altadena in July 2004, or who knew a family with a 1-year-old boy named Kamerin, 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 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.
