Rashaan Fuqua was 28 years old when he died on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006, in the Broadway-Manchester neighborhood of South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 127 W. 112th St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's Southeast Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 28-year-old black male" who "died Wednesday, Oct. 18, after being stabbed in Broadway-Manchester." The entry gave a street address, but it did not say whether that was his home, the home of someone he knew or simply the place where he was found. No follow-up story appears to have been written.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Rashaan Fuqua 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. His name is not a common one, and the few online listings that carry it are people-search pages that mix records of different people and cannot be tied to him with any confidence.
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.
At 28, he was a young man, likely past his school years and possibly working, raising children or helping to support relatives, though the record says nothing about any of that. People who knew him in his twenties would now be in their forties or fifties, and some of them may still remember the day he died.
Broadway-Manchester is a residential neighborhood in South Los Angeles, made up mostly of small single-family homes and modest apartment buildings on numbered east-west streets. It takes its name from two of its main streets, Broadway and Manchester Avenue, and lies in the part of the city patrolled by the Southeast Division. Like many South Los Angeles neighborhoods, it has long been home to working families who have lived on the same blocks for decades, which means neighbors often know one another well.
Los Angeles still recorded roughly 480 to 520 homicides a year in the mid-2000s, and many of those killings were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Rashaan Fuqua could be found in news archives or public records. More than 19 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on or near West 112th Street in October 2006, or who knew a 28-year-old man named Rashaan Fuqua from the neighborhood, 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 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).
