Luis Alonso Silva was 34 years old when he died on Tuesday, February 15, 2005, in Florence, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 248 W. Florence Ave. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case handled by the 77th Street Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described him as "a 34-year-old Latino male" who "died Tuesday, Feb. 15, after being stabbed in Florence." That short entry is nearly all that has been made public about how he died.
A brief death notice that appears to be his was published in the Los Angeles Daily News from March 3 to March 5, 2005, about two weeks after his death. It read, in full, "Silva, Luis Alonso, 34, Compton," followed by the name of Angeleno Mortuary. The notice gave no other details about his life, his family or his work. The word Compton may refer to where he lived, though the notice does not say.
No longer obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found, and no news outlet appears to have reported on the death. He surely had family and friends who remember who he was, but little of that has entered the public record.
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.
Luis Silva is a common name, and searches turn up many men who share it, among them a man whose killing in Texas led to a murder charge and others whose obituaries appeared across the United States and Canada. None of those cases has anything to do with the man who died in Florence.
Florence is one of the older communities of South Los Angeles, named for the long east-west avenue that runs through it. Florence Avenue is a busy commercial street, lined with small shops, markets, auto businesses and apartment buildings, and it carries heavy traffic toward the Harbor Freeway and beyond. The address in the record lies along that street, which suggests that people who lived or worked nearby may have seen or heard something, though the record does not say whether he was hurt indoors or outside.
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 Luis Alonso Silva could be found in news archives or public records. More than 20 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Luis Silva, or who was on or near West Florence Avenue in mid February 2005, may hold information that could help investigators. 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).
