Aminadab Martinez was 19 years old when he died on Sunday, June 13, 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 250 W. 53rd St. 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 19-year-old Latino male" who "died Sunday, June 13, 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 Aminadab Martinez 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.
His first name, Aminadab, is unusual. It comes from the Bible, where it appears in the genealogies of the Old Testament and the Gospels. Searches for the name turn up government workers in Mexico and people who comment on social media pages in El Salvador and Guatemala, but none of them can be connected to the young man who died in South Los Angeles. The record gives a street address on West 53rd Street, 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. West 53rd Street is one of the residential streets in the neighborhood. The area falls within the LAPD's Newton Division.
Less than two weeks later, on June 24, 2004, an 18-year-old named Trevon Dasha Gibson was also stabbed to death in South Park, at an address on West 52nd Place. No public record links the two deaths.
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 Aminadab Martinez 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 Aminadab Martinez, or who was on or near West 53rd Street in South Park in mid-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).
