HOLLYWOOD HILLS—The Los Angeles Police Department announced on their website that on May 18, members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foreign Prosecution Liaison Unit took into custody, murder suspect, Giovani Gonzalez at the Los Angeles International Airport after 32 years of avoiding apprehension.
The LAPD reported on November 16, 1990, Gonzalez a documented gang member in Los Angeles, was standing on a sidewalk in a Hollywood neighborhood along with the female victim and other gang members. He became involved in a verbal argument with the victim and pointed a shotgun at the victim’s head and fired point-blank killing the victim. After the murder, Gonzalez fled the country to Guatemala and went into hiding.
The investigation revealed that the suspect was a Guatemalan National and that he was living with his mother at her home in the town of Achiotillos Monjas, Jalpa, Guatemala. On January 24, 1991, an affidavit for international extradition was signed for the suspect.
The State Department Office of International Affairs, the United States Embassy in Guatemala and Guatemalan Law Enforcement Officials started efforts to execute the provisional arrest warrant that was issued for the suspect. The investigation revealed that the suspect became aware that law enforcement was looking for him and fled his mother’s residence and went into hiding. The case went dormant and the provisional arrest warrant expired after a period of time.
Through the years, investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foreign Prosecution Unit and the United States Marshal Service Pacific Southwest Regional Fugitive Task Force continued doing work on the case focusing on developing new leads on the suspect’s whereabouts.
In April 2017, investigators got a break in the case when the State Department’s Regional Security Officer in Guatemala discovered that a person using Gonzalez’s name and identifiers obtained an identification card in Guatemala including a recent address. Surveillance was conducted by Guatemalan law enforcement which confirmed that the person was in fact the suspect wanted in Los Angeles for the 1990 murder.
Those details were submitted to Los Angeles Police Department West Bureau Homicide Detectives and the District Attorney’s Office at Extradition Services Unit to re-new and activate the extradition request for the suspect in Guatemala. On January 25, 2021, the request for the suspect’s extradition was completed, finalized and submitted to the Office of International Affairs (OIA) in Washington DC.
On February 8, 2021, Gonzalez was arrested in Guatemala. On May 3, 2022 he was ordered to be extradited to Los Angeles and on May 18, he was booked for 187(a)PC-Murder (his booking No. 6381466).
Anyone with details about the incident is asked to contact Detective Batres at (323) 727-8617. During non-business hours or on weekends, calls should be directed to 1-877-LAPD-24-7 (1-877-527-3247). Anyone wishing to remain anonymous should call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (800-222-8477) or www.lacrimestoppers.org Tipsters may also visit www.lapdonline.org and click on “Anonymous Web Tips” under the Get Involved-Crime Stoppers menu to submit an online tip.
