Andre Maurice Butler was 68 years old when he died on Wednesday, September 15, 2021, outside the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after being stabbed near 11601 W. San Vicente Blvd. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described him as "a 68-year-old Black male" who "died Wednesday, Sept. 15, after being stabbed near 11601 W. San Vicente Blvd." That address belongs to the sprawling West Los Angeles VA campus, and Andre Butler was one of the homeless veterans who lived in tents on the sidewalk outside its gates, in a camp that came to be known as Veterans Row.
His life before that was told in a long profile published by the journalism studio Long Lead.
"He was born on Independence Day, joined the Marines, and died as a disabled man living in a tent on the streets of Los Angeles," it began. The profile described a Fox 11 news segment filmed outside the VA gates in February 2019, in which Butler, a Vietnam veteran "clad in a black fedora and a matching hooded sweatshirt," told the crew that police sweeps had taken his belongings three times. A photograph taken in May 2021 showed him sitting in his tent on Veterans Row.
In the months before his death he was seriously disabled. Spectrum News 1 reported in 2022 that Rob Reynolds, a veteran and veterans' advocate, had written in his notes that Butler "is paralyzed from the waist down. I told the staff that he needs to be inside because we can't take care of him." Reynolds ended that entry with the words "living in a tent is a death sentence for him."
According to Spectrum News 1, Butler "was still at the encampment four months later when another veteran who had shown symptoms of mental illness stabbed him." Reynolds later showed a reporter the place on the sidewalk, marked with spray paint. "This is where Andre died," he said. "You see, the guys wrote down their names, so you have Bryan and Andre." The Santa Monica Mirror reported that Butler was the second homeless veteran killed at the Veterans Row encampment that year. By Nov. 1, according to Spectrum News 1, the encampment had been cleaned up.
None of the accounts reviewed for this story named the man who stabbed him or said whether anyone was charged.
The West Los Angeles VA campus covers hundreds of acres in West Los Angeles, next to Brentwood, on land donated in 1888 to house disabled soldiers. San Vicente Boulevard, a wide thoroughfare, runs along its western edge.
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 Andre Maurice Butler 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 on or visited Veterans Row on San Vicente Boulevard in September 2021, or who knew Andre Butler, 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.
