Execution-Style Slaying in Fairfax Leaves Many Questions, Police Say

Police detectives fanned out through the Fairfax District on Thursday, searching without success for clues in an execution-style murder that has left unsettled a neighborhood made up largely of middle-class Jewish immigrants unaccustomed to bloodshed on their streets.

Eli Yacobov, a 40-year-old auto body shop operator, was killed Tuesday evening when two men fired assault weapons through the windows of his silver Mercedes in front of his brother’s two-story Spanish-styled home in the 100 block of North Crescent Heights Boulevard.

“Our men have been digging like mad, trying to come up with clues, trying to answer a lot of questions that we haven’t been able to answer,” Lt. John Zorn of the Los Angeles Police Department said late Thursday. “But we have nothing new to report.”

Zorn said investigators have been talking to Yacobov’s relatives and neighbors who may have witnessed the attack. They have been unable to develop a theory in the case, he said.

However, Zorn did say it does not appear that Yacobov’s murder was connected to the death two weeks ago of another Israeli immigrant, David Elias Isaac, who was fatally shot after his wife opened the door to his Beverlywood home to a man pretending to be a Western Union messenger. Police believe the motive in that unsolved killing was robbery.

“As a matter of routine, we will look at similar crimes, but as of yet, we have established no links to any previous crimes,” Zorn said. “This is a complex case and it is going to take some time to unravel it.”

Yacobov was well known in the Fairfax District, a densely populated neighborhood of Spanish-style homes, apartments and a shopping area heavily trafficked with pedestrians. The district has long been dominated by Jewish people from all corners of the world, especially Israel, Russia and Iran.

Merchants remember Yacobov shopping with his parents, and tending to the neighborhood restaurant he briefly owned, the Grill Express.

“He was a very good customer,” said Simon Ravivo, who owns two produce stores on Fairfax Avenue. “He spent money very easily. He didn’t pay attention to what things cost.”

Others said they were too fearful to talk about Yacobov, because of the brutal nature of his slaying.

“It’s a shame, it’s sad,” said one. “Things like that don’t happen here.”

Police agreed that the Yacobov slaying appeared to be an isolated incident in the district.

Authorities broke up an extortion racket in the commercial shopping area a decade ago, and many longtime residents still talk in hushed tones of an “Israeli mafia” preying on merchants.

But Michelle Walsh, who organizes police patrols of the area, said violent crime is a rarity. She said graffiti vandalism by “middle-class brats” is among the neighborhood’s biggest crime problems, despite the barred windows on many homes that give the impression of fear and danger.

“This is more of a property crimes area,” Walsh said. “It’s actually pretty safe.”