Juvenal Lopez was 49 years old when he died on Friday, Jan. 1, 2010, in Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 15934 Victory Blvd. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department West Valley Division case.
He was a Latino man, and LA Weekly reported his full name as Juvenal Lopez Sosa. The paper described him as a "leather craftsman." According to that report, his family said he "left on his bicycle at 6:30 pm on New Year's Eve and never returned."
The next morning he was found beside a bike path. Ed Winter, a spokesman for the coroner's office, told the Los Angeles Times that Lopez "was stabbed several times on a bike trail across from Victory Boulevard and was pronounced dead at the scene at 7:35 a.m."
LA Weekly reported that he was "discovered next to his bicycle by a Los Angeles Parks & Recreation employee around 7 am," and that his body was found 25 feet off Victory Boulevard. "Police believe he may have been robbed," the paper said.
Those details leave a gap of roughly 12 hours between the time he left home and the time he was found. The record does not say where he was going that evening, whether he was riding to meet someone, when exactly he was attacked, or whether anyone saw him on the path during the night. It does not say what, if anything, was taken from him, or whether detectives ever identified a suspect. His bicycle was still with him when he was found, which may mean that whoever attacked him was after something else, but that is only an inference.
Van Nuys is one of the oldest and largest communities in the San Fernando Valley, a mix of homes, apartment buildings, shops, industrial businesses and government offices. Victory Boulevard is one of the long east to west avenues that cross the Valley. Bike paths and stretches of open land in the area are used by commuters and recreational riders during the day, but at night, and especially on a holiday night, they can be dark and nearly empty, with few people around to see or hear what happens.
Homicides in Los Angeles fell steeply in the late 2000s and early 2010s, yet many killings from those years were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Juvenal Lopez could be found in news archives or public records. More than 15 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who used the bike path near the 15900 block of Victory Boulevard on New Year's Eve 2009 or early on Jan. 1, 2010, who saw a man on a bicycle that night, or who knew Juvenal through his work with leather, 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. When the case was reported, LA Weekly asked anyone with information to contact West Valley Homicide detectives at 818-374-7730. Anyone with information can call the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247 (877-LAPD-24-7), or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
