Jose Guadalupe Carrillo was 24 years old when he died on Friday, August 28, 2009, in East Hollywood. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 939 N. Mariposa Ave. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded only the basic facts of his death: his name, his age, the date, the address and the fact that he had been stabbed. No account of the attack was published, no detective was quoted, and no follow-up story about the case appears to exist.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Jose Guadalupe Carrillo 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.
Jose Carrillo is also a very common name in Southern California and across Mexico and Latin America. Searches turned up a Los Angeles police detective, men in Georgia, Texas and Northern California, and many obituaries for other men who shared the name, none of whom can be connected to the young man who died on Mariposa Avenue.
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.
East Hollywood is a dense neighborhood on the east side of Hollywood, in the central part of Los Angeles. It is home to Los Angeles City College and Barnsdall Art Park, where Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House stands, and it includes the areas known as Little Armenia and Thai Town. Its side streets, Mariposa Avenue among them, are lined mostly with apartment buildings and older houses, and many working families and young renters live there.
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 Jose Guadalupe Carrillo could be found in news archives or public records. More than 16 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on or near Mariposa Avenue in East Hollywood in late August 2009, or who knew a 24-year-old man named Jose Carrillo who died that summer, 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 (877-LAPD-24-7), or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
