Herman Percy Cade was 64 years old when he died on Saturday, December 11, 2021, in the Vermont Square neighborhood of South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds near Western and Vermont avenues. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Bureau Homicide unit.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 64-year-old Black male" who "died Saturday, Dec. 11, after being stabbed near Western & Vermont avenues in Vermont Square." That location is a puzzle. Western and Vermont are parallel north-south avenues more than a mile apart, so they never meet, and the record does not say which cross street was meant. No follow-up story appears to have been written.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Herman Percy Cade 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. Herman Cade is an uncommon name, which may make it easier for someone who knew him to recognize it. A man named Herman Cade died at his home in New Orleans a few weeks later, in January 2022, but he was a different person and has no connection to this death.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether he was stabbed during a fight or a robbery, attacked by a stranger or by someone he knew, or hurt indoors or on the street. 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.
Vermont Square is a neighborhood in South Los Angeles, a few miles southwest of downtown and just south of the area around Exposition Park and the University of Southern California. It is made up mostly of older single-family homes, small apartment buildings and corner businesses, crossed by busy north-south commercial corridors such as Vermont Avenue, Western Avenue and Normandie Avenue, which are lined with shops, churches, auto shops and bus stops. The neighborhood has long been home to working families, many of whom have lived there for decades.
Los Angeles recorded about 260 homicides a year in 2018 and 2019, among the lowest yearly totals in more than half a century, yet many of those killings still went unsolved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Herman Percy Cade could be found in news archives or public records. More than four years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived or worked along Western or Vermont avenues in the Vermont Square area in December 2021, or who knew a 64-year-old man named Herman Cade, 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.
