Alejandro Antonio Flores was 50 years old when he was killed in the early morning of Saturday, June 7, 2014, in the Exposition Park area of South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds in the 3700 block of South Western Avenue. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Criminal Gang Homicide Division case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described a crowded room. "About 5 a.m., Flores was at an after-hours gathering inside a store front with about 25 other people when a fight broke out," the Times wrote, citing Det. Sal LaBarbera. Flores was stabbed multiple times, and so was a 36-year-old man. Flores was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:32 a.m., according to coroner's spokesman Ed Winter. Two men fled the scene after the stabbing.
Detectives later found a third victim, a 63-year-old man, who had also apparently been stabbed at the party.
Months later the case went before the Los Angeles City Council. A council motion stated that on June 7, 2014, at about 5 a.m., the 50-year-old was attacked by two individuals "without any provocation." Later that year the council approved a $50,000 reward for information leading to the person or persons responsible. CBS Los Angeles reported that Flores "was stabbed several times at 5 a.m. on June 7 by two men while he was at a nightclub on the corner of Exposition Boulevard and Western Avenue." The suspects were seen in a white Toyota Tundra, police said.
The pickup is one of the few concrete leads ever made public. With about two dozen other people in the room, many people saw at least part of what happened that morning. Some of them may have been reluctant to speak to police at the time, perhaps because of where they had been or what kind of gathering it was. No obituary or memorial page for Flores could be found, and his name is shared by many other men, including a man of the same full name in Iowa whose unrelated criminal case appears in search results.
The address lies at the western edge of the Exposition Park area, south of downtown Los Angeles. The neighborhood takes its name from the large park that holds the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and several museums, and the University of Southern California sits nearby. Western Avenue is a long commercial corridor lined with small businesses, auto shops and storefronts, many of them quiet in the hours before dawn.
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 Alejandro Antonio Flores 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 was at the after-hours gathering on South Western Avenue near Exposition Boulevard early on June 7, 2014, or who knows who drove a white Toyota Tundra away from there, may hold the information detectives need. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a vehicle seen nearby or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. The Times asked anyone with information to call the Criminal Gang Homicide Division at 485-1383. 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.
