Biking home tonight up Historic Filipinotown on Vendome north of Temple I stopped, having sighted the above cordoned off crime scene on Dillon Street just south of the 101 Freeway overpass (map). A patrol car leaving the perimeter pulled up to me and I asked the officer driving what happened.

“Do you live in the area?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

I told him and he paused before telling me it was a homicide and then added “be careful” as he pulled the cruiser away and left.

“You too!” I said.

I stayed a few minutes more and observed officers climbing over the low guardrail and moving out of sight into the foliage, presumably where the body was located.

UPDATED (05.08): I emailed Ruben Vives and Jill Leovy of the L.A. Times’ Homicide Report blog and heard back from Vives last night who wrote that the victim is a woman and detectives aren’t sure how long she’d been dead because her body was already in the decomposition stage.

FWIW, my first impression was the obvious one: gang-related. But then there was something about the semi-secluded location of the victim that seemed more like the body had been intentionally dumped. In an eerie coincidence it was only a couple days ago I got caught up in reading about the Hillside Strangler, and so to pass a murder scene so close to home that was similar to several from that case is creepy.

Related posts:

1. This is Los Angeles, 2007
2. Cahunega Pass murder victim i.d.’d
3. Rick James Found Dead
4. Fresno man eliminated as prime suspect in L.A. serial killings
5. Are the murderers in this South Central neighborhood really that dumb, or are the detectives really good?