Andy Omar Garcia was 36 years old when he died on Monday, February 22, 2016, in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after being stabbed. His death was ruled a homicide. The record is unusually thin: the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report listed the place where he was stabbed only as "UNKNOWN," and its entry does not name an investigating agency.
The Times recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 36-year-old Latino male" who "died Monday, Feb. 22, after being stabbed at UNKNOWN." No street, block or neighborhood was given, and no follow-up story appears to have been written.
One public record does fill in a little of his life. A brief obituary posted by Forest Lawn says that "Andy Omar Garcia, 36, born on December 26, 1979, in El Salvador, passed away February 22, 2016. He resided in Los Angeles, California at the time of his passing."
It adds that arrangements were under the direction of Forest Lawn in Glendale. The name, the age and the date all match the coroner's record. The obituary does not mention how he died, and it does not name family members, a job or a neighborhood. Still, it shows that someone saw to his funeral.
Andy Garcia is also the name of a well-known actor, and searches for it are crowded with film listings and celebrity news, which may be one reason so little about this man surfaces online. Many other men named Andy Garcia appear in obituaries across the country, none of whom can be tied 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. Without an address, it is not even publicly known which police agency was responsible for the investigation, though the Times listed the death in the city of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is home to one of the largest Salvadoran communities outside El Salvador. Many families who left the country during and after its civil war in the 1980s settled in neighborhoods west of downtown, such as Pico-Union and Westlake, and later spread across the city and county. Whether Andy Omar Garcia lived in one of those neighborhoods is not known.
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 Andy Omar Garcia 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 knew a 36-year-old man named Andy Omar Garcia, born in El Salvador and living in Los Angeles, or who knows where and how he was hurt in February 2016, may hold information that could help investigators finally place the case. 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.
