Robert M. Duncan was 66 years old when he died on Wednesday, November 11, 2015, Veterans Day, in the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after being stabbed at 1333 S. Dunsmuir Ave. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's West 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 66-year-old black male" who "died Wednesday, Nov. 11, after being stabbed in Mid-Wilshire." The entry gave a street address, but it did not say whether that was his home, the home of someone he knew or simply the place where he was found. It did not say when he was stabbed, which could have been on that day or earlier. No follow-up story appears to have been written.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Robert M.
Duncan 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. Robert Duncan is a common name, and searches are crowded with other men who share it, including a federal prosecutor in Kentucky with the same middle initial, a former Ohio Supreme Court justice and the San Francisco poet, none of whom have any 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.
At 66, he may have been a familiar face on his block, and someone may still remember him and the people around him in the fall of 2015.
Mid-Wilshire is a broad, centrally located part of Los Angeles that stretches along Wilshire Boulevard west of downtown. Its blocks mix older apartment buildings, duplexes and single-family homes on tree-lined residential streets, and it lies close to the Miracle Mile, where the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and other institutions line the stretch of Wilshire known as Museum Row. Dunsmuir Avenue is one of the area's residential side streets.
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 M. Duncan could be found in news archives or public records. More than ten years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on or near South Dunsmuir Avenue in November 2015, or who knew a 66-year-old man named Robert Duncan from the Mid-Wilshire area, 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.
