Enedino Perez was 20 years old when he died on Monday, July 12, 2004, in Boyle Heights. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 2514 E. 1st St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's Hollenbeck Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described him as "a 20-year-old Latino male" who "died Monday, July 12, after being stabbed in Boyle Heights." The entry gave a street address on First Street, one of the neighborhood's main roads, but it did not say whether that was his home, a business or simply the place where he was found. That short entry is nearly all that has been made public about his death.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Enedino Perez 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.
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.
Enedino is a traditional Spanish first name, and Perez is one of the most common surnames in the Spanish-speaking world, so searches turn up many men who share the name. They include men arrested or sentenced in Northern and Central California and in Washington state in later years, and older men remembered in obituaries in Chicago, Clovis and Fort Worth. None of them can be connected to the young man who died in Boyle Heights in 2004.
Boyle Heights lies just east of downtown Los Angeles, across the Los Angeles River. It is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods, and in the early twentieth century it was home to large Jewish, Japanese American, Mexican American and other communities living side by side. Over the decades it became a center of Mexican American life in Los Angeles, known for its murals, its small family businesses and its strong sense of history. First Street is one of its main east-west corridors, and Mariachi Plaza, where musicians in traditional dress gather to wait for hire, sits along it. The neighborhood is patrolled by the LAPD's Hollenbeck Division.
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 Enedino Perez 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 20-year-old man named Enedino Perez, or who was near the 2500 block of East First Street in Boyle Heights in mid-July 2004, 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).
