Leonardo Chaves Ulario was 21 years old when he died on Friday, June 30, 2000, in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department 77th Street Division case, which places it in South Los Angeles. The coroner's record as published gives no address or neighborhood for the place where he was hurt.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 21-year-old Latino male" who "died Friday, June 30, after being stabbed." Unlike most entries in the database, it did not name a neighborhood or a street. No news story about his death appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Leonardo Chaves Ulario 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. The surname Ulario is uncommon, and searches for his full name, and for the shorter form Leonardo Ulario, turned up no other records about him at all. It is possible that he was known to friends and family under a different combination of his names, which may be one reason he left so faint a trace in public records.
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. The record also does not say where in the 77th Street Division the attack took place.
The LAPD's 77th Street Division covers a large part of South Los Angeles, including neighborhoods such as Vermont Square, Hyde Park, Manchester Square and parts of Florence. It is a dense area of single-family homes, apartment buildings and busy commercial streets such as Florence Avenue, Manchester Avenue, Vermont Avenue and Western Avenue. The division takes its name from its station on 77th Street, and it has long been one of the busiest homicide divisions in the city. Many of its neighborhoods are home to long-established Black and Latino families.
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 Leonardo Chaves Ulario could be found in news archives or public records. More than 25 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 21-year-old man named Leonardo Chaves Ulario, or Leonardo Ulario, in South Los Angeles in the summer of 2000, or who remembers a stabbing in the 77th Street area at the end of June that year, 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).
