14-Year-Old Boy’s Battered Body Found

Los Angeles police on Sunday were investigating as a probable homicide the death of a 14-year-old boy whose body was found on the grounds of the Ventura Boulevard apartment complex where he lived with his family.

Residents discovered the body of the victim, Seiichi Yamamura, at about 4:30 a.m. on an interior roadway of the Viewpoint Apartments, an 800-unit complex in the 20500 block of Ventura Boulevard.

LAPD Det. Rick Swanston, the lead homicide investigator at the West Valley Division, said the boy had suffered “a lot of blunt force injuries.” He declined to describe the injuries further.

“At first we thought it might have been a traffic accident, but now it doesn’t look like it, so we will have to wait for an autopsy to determine the exact cause of death,” Swanston said.

According to family members’ accounts to police, Seiichi and the rest of the family went to bed around 1:30 a.m. in their apartment on the west side of the complex. When some family members awoke around 9 a.m., they discovered the boy missing and began searching for him. They stumbled into police, who were conducting their investigation on the east end of the complex, where Seiichi’s body was found.

“The parents were devastated,” Swanston said. “They had just moved into the building.”

“We don’t know what happened here,” said a friend of the Yamamura family who declined to give his name. “The family is very upset.”

The family is originally from Tokyo, Swanston said.

The boy’s father, Yoshikazu Yamamura, previously owned a restaurant in Los Angeles, Swanston said. The family then moved to Lakewood, Colo., but returned after less than a year, settling in the Viewpoint Apartments only two weeks ago, Swanston said.

He added that his investigators do not know whether Seiichi died within the gated complex, which has a guard posted at its main entrance, or in another location.

Seiichi was known to go out at night when he lived in Colorado, but Swanston said since the youth had moved to Woodland Hills, he barely left the apartment.