Isaac Eliezer Alatorre was 21 years old when he died on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020, in the Westlake district just west of downtown Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds near 1337 W. 5th St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Central Bureau Homicide case.
The coroner's record describes him as a Latino man. An obituary posted by Rose Hills, the funeral home and memorial park in Whittier, gives his full name, Isaac Eliezer Alatorre, and says he was born on June 13, 1999, in Los Angeles and passed away on Oct. 6, 2020, the same day recorded by the coroner. That means he had turned 21 less than four months before he died, and that he was a son of the city where he was killed.
The obituary's public listing does not describe his family, his schooling or his work, and no news outlet appears to have reported on his death.
Other people named Isaac Alatorre turn up in searches, among them a school administrator in the San Fernando Valley and men whose relatives' obituaries were published in other states. None of them is the young man who died on Fifth Street, and nothing in those records can be connected to him.
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.
He died in one of the most crowded parts of the city, where a stabbing may have been seen or heard by neighbors or passers-by, even if none of them came forward publicly.
Westlake is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Built up in the early 1900s as a fashionable district around the lake at MacArthur Park, it later became an area of older apartment buildings and residential hotels, home to many working families and immigrants, especially from Mexico and Central America. Fifth Street runs west from downtown into the neighborhood, and the high-rise towers of the financial district are visible from many of its blocks.
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 Isaac Eliezer Alatorre could be found in news archives or public records. More than five years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was near the 1300 block of West Fifth Street in Westlake in early October 2020, or who knew Isaac, his friends and where he spent his time in the weeks before his death, may hold information that could help detectives. 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.
