James Thomas Boozer was 62 years old when he died on Friday, September 10, 2004, in Vermont Square, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 5316 S. Budlong 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 coroner's record describes him as a Black man in his early 60s. Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about James Thomas Boozer 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.
Searches for his name turned up only other people: a well-known professional basketball player who shares the surname, an Army general, and men named James Boozer whose obituaries were published in Illinois, Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana. None of them is the man who died on Budlong 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.
He was 62, an age at which many men have spent decades in one community, raised families or worked long careers. Nothing published says whether he lived at the Budlong Avenue address, was visiting someone there, or was found outside. Killings of older men are less common than those of young men, and a death like his would likely have been felt by neighbors and anyone who knew him on the block.
Vermont Square lies in South Los Angeles, south of Exposition Park and the University of Southern California. It is a largely residential neighborhood of modest single-family houses and small apartment buildings, laid out on a grid of long north-south streets such as Budlong Avenue. Many families have lived there for generations, and residents on such blocks often know one another by sight, which means someone may have noticed unusual activity on the day he was hurt.
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 James Thomas Boozer 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 lived on or near Budlong Avenue in September 2004, who knew James or the people he spent time with, or who heard talk afterward about what happened to him, 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).
