Robert Delgado was 25 years old when he died on Saturday, July 23, 2016, in the Westlake area of Los Angeles, near Pico-Union. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 2010 W. Pico Blvd. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case under LAPD Rampart.
Shortly before 8:30 p.m., Delgado got into a fight with another man, who stabbed him, according to LAPD Det. Ray Martinez. The attacker ran west on West Pico Boulevard, Martinez told the Los Angeles Times. Delgado was pronounced dead at the scene at 8:36 p.m., according to coroner's records. Police said they were trying to obtain surveillance camera footage from the area. The account did not say what the fight was about, whether the two men knew each other, or whether anyone else was with Delgado that evening.
Funeral home records list Robert Delgado, 25, of Los Angeles, as having been born on Sept.
13, 1990, and having "entered into eternal rest on July 23, 2016." Beyond that, little about his life has been made public. No longer obituary describing his family, his work or his interests could be found for this story, and no news outlet appears to have followed up on the case after the first report. Robert Delgado is also a common name, and searches turn up many other men who share it, including a Monterey Park man sent to federal prison for identity theft and a man shot by police in Portland, Oregon, in 2021. None of them is connected to this death.
Pico Boulevard at Westlake Avenue lies in one of the most densely populated parts of Los Angeles, where the Westlake and Pico-Union neighborhoods meet just west of downtown. The area is crowded with older apartment buildings, small storefronts, markets and street vendors, and it has long been a home for working families and newly arrived immigrants, especially from Central America. Its sidewalks are busy well into the evening. MacArthur Park, one of the city's best-known urban parks, lies a short distance to the north.
Because the attacker fled on foot along a busy boulevard on a summer Saturday evening, it is possible that drivers, shopkeepers or people waiting at bus stops saw him running. Surveillance cameras on nearby businesses may also have recorded part of what happened, though the public record does not say whether police ever obtained that footage.
By the mid-2010s Los Angeles was recording roughly 250 to 300 homicides a year, among the lowest totals in decades, yet many of those killings still went unsolved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Robert Delgado could be found in news archives or public records. More than nine years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was near West Pico Boulevard and Westlake Avenue on the evening of July 23, 2016, who saw a man running west on Pico, or who knew Robert Delgado and heard talk about the fight, 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. Rampart detectives could be reached at 484-3650 at the time of the death. 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.
