Ana Funes was 25 years old when she died on Friday, September 12, 2008, in Lakewood, in southeast Los Angeles County. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died of stab wounds at 5009 Hayter Ave. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report spelled her last name Funez. Its short entry described her as "a 25-year-old Latina" who "died of multiple stab wounds to her abdomen and possible strangulation in the 5000 block of Hayter Avenue on Saturday, Sept. 13, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department." The entry closed with the words "No other details were available." The Times gave the date as Saturday, Sept. 13, while the coroner's listing gives Sept.
12, which may mean she was found or pronounced dead the day after she was attacked, although no record explains the difference.
The mention of possible strangulation sets her death apart from many stabbing cases. An attack that involved both a knife and hands at the throat suggests a close, personal struggle rather than a shooting from a distance, and the coroner's address on a residential street suggests she may have been inside or near a home. The record does not say whose home it was, whether she lived there, or who else was present.
Beyond her name, her age and the place where she died, almost nothing about Ana Funes has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no follow-up news report appears to have been written. She surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who she was, but none of that has entered the public record. Ana Funes is not a rare name, and searches turn up other women who share it in Washington, Connecticut, Texas and elsewhere, none of whom can be tied to this death.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say what time of day she was hurt, whether anyone heard a struggle, whether a weapon was found, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Lakewood is a city in southeast Los Angeles County, next to Long Beach. It was built almost all at once in the early 1950s as one of the country's best-known planned postwar suburbs, and its streets are lined mostly with modest single-family houses with front lawns. The city is home to the Lakewood Center shopping mall, and rather than run its own police force it contracts with the Sheriff's Department for law enforcement, which is why the case belongs to sheriff's homicide detectives.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Ana Funes could be found in news archives or public records. More than 17 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a young woman named Ana Funes or Ana Funez in Lakewood in September 2008, or who lived near Hayter Avenue at that time and heard or saw something unusual, may hold information that could help. 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 contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
