Raji Winnetoul Guyton was 46 years old when he died on Monday, December 8, 2014, in downtown Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds near the northbound side of the 101 Freeway, under the Hill Street bridge. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Central Division case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 46-year-old Black male" who "died Monday, Dec. 8, after being stabbed near 101 Freeway N/B under Hill Street bridge in Downtown." No police news release, newspaper story or follow-up report about the case could be found.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Raji Guyton has been made public.
A funeral home website lists an online memorial for a man named Raji Guyton, but no details from it could be confirmed as belonging to the man who died in Los Angeles, and no family fundraiser or news coverage appears to exist. He surely had family, friends or acquaintances who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record. His middle name, Winnetoul, is highly unusual, and his full name does not appear to be shared by anyone else in public records, which makes the silence around his death all the more striking.
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.
The location itself raises questions that the record does not answer. The place where he was found lies along the edge of a major freeway, in the space beneath a bridge, a kind of spot that pedestrians rarely pass and that is often hidden from street view. Places like that around downtown have long been used as shelter by people without housing, which may suggest he was staying nearby or passing through, but nothing in the record says so.
The Hollywood Freeway, as the 101 is known through this stretch, cuts through the northern edge of downtown Los Angeles in a sunken trench, with city streets such as Hill Street crossing above it on bridges. The area around it includes the Civic Center, with its government buildings and courthouses, and the approaches to Chinatown and Echo Park. By day the streets above are busy with office workers and traffic; at night the area beneath and beside the freeway can be nearly deserted.
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 Raji Winnetoul Guyton could be found in news archives or public records. More than 11 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 46-year-old man named Raji Guyton, or who was near the Hill Street bridge over the 101 Freeway in early December 2014, may know something that could help investigators. 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.
