Jari Wayne was 32 years old when he died on Tuesday, September 29, 2015, in Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at Vanowen Street and Woodley Avenue. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's West Valley Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 32-year-old white male" who "died Tuesday, Sept. 29, after being stabbed in Van Nuys." The location was given as an intersection rather than a street address, which suggests that he may have been hurt outdoors, on or near the street, though the record does not say so directly.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Jari Wayne 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.
Jari is an unusual first name in the United States, and searches for it together with Wayne are swamped by stories about the hockey players Jari Kurri and Wayne Gretzky, who were teammates on the Edmonton Oilers, and by pages about the Batman character Bruce Wayne. None of those results has anything to do with this man, and no record could be found that fills in his life.
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.
Van Nuys is one of the oldest communities in the San Fernando Valley and serves as a civic center for the Valley, with a cluster of city, county and federal government buildings and courthouses. It is a busy, densely built area, with apartment complexes, small businesses and long commercial boulevards. Van Nuys Airport, one of the busiest general aviation airports in the country, lies within the neighborhood. Vanowen Street is one of the long east-west streets that crosses the Valley, and Woodley Avenue runs north and south through it.
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 Jari Wayne 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 was near Vanowen Street and Woodley Avenue in Van Nuys in late September 2015, or who knew a 32-year-old man named Jari Wayne, may hold information that could help detectives finally explain what happened to him. 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.
