Trevon Dasha Gibson was 18 years old when he died on Thursday, June 24, 2004, in South Park, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 100 W. 52nd Place. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case handled by the Newton Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described him as "a 18-year-old black male" who "died Thursday, June 24, after being stabbed in South Park." 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 Trevon Dasha Gibson 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.
Trevon Gibson is not an unusual name, and searches turn up several unrelated young men who shared it, among them a 21-year-old from Hickory Valley, Tennessee, who died in 2012 and a high school football player in Fremont, in Northern California. Others named Trevon Gibson appear as surviving relatives in obituaries from South Carolina and the Bahamas. None of them can be connected to the young man who died in South Park. The record gives an address on West 52nd Place, which suggests he may have been hurt at or near a home, though it does not say whether he lived there.
South Park is a neighborhood in South Los Angeles, south of downtown and the Santa Monica Freeway. It is a dense, working class area of older single family homes, duplexes and small apartment buildings on a grid of numbered streets, with small markets, churches and auto shops along its main avenues. Over the decades it has been home to many Black families and, increasingly, to families from Mexico and Central America. West 52nd Place is one of the short residential streets in the neighborhood. The area falls within the LAPD's Newton 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 Trevon Dasha Gibson 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 Trevon Gibson, or who was on or near West 52nd Place in South Park in late June 2004, 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).
