(Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 67)
Truly the best way to honor Memorial Day this year would be to end all wars waged by the United States, which take U.S. lives to fight and lose as well as any others.
But another way to honor lives lost to senseless wars would be to consider every life taken by senseless violence inside the nation’s borders as a life also worth commemorating.
At the local level for yours truly, five years ago this same weekend, a 17 year old named Leonardo Gabriel Martinez was shot and killed at the intersection of Burns street and Virgil avenue in the Virgil Village area. Since that day, eighteen more people have been murdered no more than two miles from that intersection, the overwhelming amount being young, male and Latino. But women’s lives have also been lost due to violence in the area, including one pregnant woman’s.
In a two-week interval this year, between March and April, three men were shot and killed in East Hollywood, while one was stabbed to death.
With respect for each of these lives, which all entail grieving families & communities, listed here are names, age, date of death, and location of decease for homicide victims in East Hollywood during the last five years:
Javier Resendiz, Jr., 27
January 03, 2015
600 block of North Alexandria avenue
Leonardo Gabriel Martinez, 17
May 23, 2015
North Virgil and Burns avenues
Wilfredo Fernando Portillo, 57
March 22, 2016
811 North Virgil avenue
Lauren Elaine Olguin, 32
April 12, 2016
500 North Virgil avenue
Hector Orlando Estrada Maldonado Jr., 20
September 16, 2016
550 North Heliotrope drive
Walter Martinez Jr., 23
September 16, 2016
550 North Heliotrope drive
Marvin Hernandez, 21
May 21, 2018
609 North Virgil avenue
Andre Pierre Warren-Cyrus, 18
June 14, 2018
North Virgil avenue & Middlebury street
Isaac Dubon, 18
November 7, 2018
1000 North Serrano avenue
Cary Rodriguez, 21
May 5, 2019
Melrose and North Westmoreland avenue
Herbert Antonio Martinez, 56
June 10, 2019
5200 West Sunset boulevard
Cindy Yaneth Lopez Vasquez, 28
July 18, 2019
900 North Oxford avenue
Alexis Gihovani Lopez, 22
July 26, 2019
4550 Marathon street
Aristides Antonio Ruiz Jr., 29
October 28, 2019
North Virgil avenue and Lockwood street
Roberto DeJesus Hernandez, 53
December 21, 2019
800 North Mariposa avenue
Fernando Puga, 28
March 21, 2020
1129 North Madison avenue
Duncan Eric Campbell Jr., 51
March 29, 2020
800 North Mariposa avenue
Alexander Wildberger-Negrete, age not listed
April 6, 2020
1648 North Kingsley drive
Joshua Alexander Andrade Galvez, 24
April 6, 2020
4477 Beverly boulevard
J.T.
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