Beyonder Diabolas Shareef was an infant, less than a year old, when he died on Friday, October 12, 2001, somewhere in Los Angeles County. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma. The public record does not give the address or the community where he was hurt. 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 described him only as "a white male" who "died Friday, Oct. 12, after sustaining blunt force trauma." His age was listed as zero, which means he had not yet reached his first birthday. The entry named no street, neighborhood or city, and it did not say how he was hurt or whether detectives had identified anyone responsible. No news story about his death appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the date of his death, almost nothing about Beyonder Diabolas Shareef has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found, and no news outlet appears to have reported on his death. His name is highly unusual, and a search for it should have found any public mention of him, yet the searches returned only unrelated people with similar surnames. Someone gave this child his name and cared for him in the short time he was alive, but none of that has entered the public record.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say where he was living, who was caring for him at the time he was hurt, whether he was injured at home or somewhere else, or whether he died at once or after time in a hospital. It does not say whether anyone was ever questioned or identified as a suspect. The coroner's finding of homicide means only that his death was caused by another person.
The death of a baby is among the hardest cases any investigator handles, and among the most painful for a community. A child that young cannot speak for himself, and the only people who know what happened are usually the adults who were around him. The Sheriff's Department investigates killings in unincorporated communities and in the many cities that contract with it for police services, and its Homicide Bureau handles every such case. Because no address was released, it is not known which part of the county this child lived in.
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 Beyonder Diabolas Shareef could be found in news archives or public records. More than 24 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew of an infant boy named Beyonder in the fall of 2001, including relatives, neighbors, babysitters, doctors or nurses, 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.
