^[1]

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 ^[2]). 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 ^[3] 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. Arriving at a crime scene is never easy ^[4]
2. Is Valley Crime Getting Worse? ^[5]
3. More violent crime along the Hollywood Hills ^[6]
4. Lock Your Doors – Beachwood Canyon Crime Update ^[7]
5. It’s Not a Crime to be Poor: More on LA’s Homeless ^[8]