Lavell Thomas Reed was 28 years old when he died on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004, in Westlake. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 660 S. Alvarado St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case, assigned to the Rampart 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 Tuesday, Oct. 19, after being stabbed in Westlake." The entry gave an address on Alvarado Street, but it did not say whether that was where he lived, where he was attacked or where he was found, and no follow-up story appears to have been written.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Lavell Thomas Reed 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. Lavell Reed is not an especially common name, but searches turn up several other people who share it, among them an elderly woman in Missouri and men and women in Texas, Alabama and Georgia who carried Lavell as a first or middle name. None of them can be connected to this death in Los Angeles.
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.
Westlake is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Los Angeles, lying just west of downtown and east of Koreatown. Its best-known landmark is MacArthur Park, and Alvarado Street, one of the neighborhood's main commercial corridors, runs past it, crowded with shops, street vendors, bus stops and pedestrians at nearly all hours. A stabbing on such a busy street may well have been seen or heard by people nearby, even if none of them came forward. The area is patrolled by the LAPD's Rampart Division.
At 28, Lavell Thomas Reed was still a young man, and the people who knew him were left without answers.
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 Lavell Thomas Reed could be found in news archives or public records. More than 21 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 28-year-old man named Lavell Thomas Reed, or who was on or near Alvarado Street in Westlake in October 2004, 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).
