David Nathanial Reavis was 50 years old when he died on Monday, May 3, 2004, in downtown Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 637 S. Main St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case, assigned to the Central Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 50-year-old black male" who "died Monday, May 3, after being stabbed in Downtown." The entry gave an address on South Main Street, but it did not say whether he lived there, whether he was attacked there or whether that was simply where he was found. No follow-up news story about his death appears to have been published.
Very little else about him has entered the public record. Searches for his name turn up mostly obituaries of other men named David Reavis in other states, none of whom can be connected to this death.
One small trace may be his: short excerpts of social media posts found in search results say that a David Reavis "passed away" on May 3, 2004, and that "he was 50 years old at the time of his death," the same date and age given in the coroner's records. The writer remembered him as "my partner in crime." The full posts could not be reviewed for this story, so it is not certain that they describe the same man, but the match suggests that someone still remembers him years later.
Even so, the basic circumstances of his death 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.
South Main Street runs through the historic core of downtown Los Angeles, an area of early twentieth century commercial buildings, old bank towers and former theaters. The blocks around Main Street also have many single-room-occupancy hotels, shelters and missions, and the streets just to the east form Skid Row, home to one of the largest concentrations of homeless people in the country. Downtown is patrolled by the LAPD's Central Division.
At 50, David Nathanial Reavis had lived half a century. He may have been a son, a brother, a father or a friend to people who still wonder what happened to him on that Monday in May.
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 David Nathanial Reavis 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 50-year-old man named David Reavis in downtown Los Angeles, or who was on or near South Main Street in early May 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).
