Arturo Hernandez was 30 years old when he died on Friday, July 27, 2001, in Atwater Village, in northeast Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at Dover Street and the Los Angeles River. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Northeast Division case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 30-year-old Latino male" who "died Friday, July 27, after being stabbed in Atwater Village." The location it gave was not a street address but the point where a street meets the river, which suggests he may have been hurt or found outdoors near the riverbank, although the record does not say so directly. No follow-up story about his death appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Arturo Hernandez 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. Arturo Hernandez is a very common name, and searches for it are crowded with unrelated men, among them a Sacramento man convicted in a 2017 killing, an animator and a professor. None of them can be connected to the man who died in Atwater Village in 2001.
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.
At 30 he was a young man, with most of his life still ahead of him. Nothing in the record says whether he had a wife or children, what kind of work he did, whether he lived nearby or was only passing through, or whether relatives in Los Angeles or elsewhere were ever told how he died.
Atwater Village is a small residential neighborhood on the east bank of the Los Angeles River, across the water from Griffith Park and bordering the city of Glendale. Its stretch of the river is one of the few where the channel has a soft, natural bottom.
Homicides in Los Angeles rose sharply in the early 2000s, climbing past 600 in 2002, and detectives carried heavy caseloads. Many killings from those years were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Arturo Hernandez could be found in news archives or public records. More than 24 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was near Dover Street and the Los Angeles River in Atwater Village in late July 2001, or who knew a 30-year-old man named Arturo Hernandez in northeast Los Angeles, 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).
