Young Couple Found Dead in Apartment

A young couple were found dead in their living room Wednesday morning, eight hours after police responded to a call of a possible homicide at their apartment.

Officers left the apartment building in the 8600 block of Snowden Avenue about 1 a.m. Wednesday after getting no response from the residence and seeing no evidence of foul play, according to a statement by the Los Angeles Police Department.

The statement also said officers thought the anonymous call had been made by a “drunk” they encountered in the apartment hallway.

About eight hours later, the parents of the male victim visited his apartment, according to building manager Paul Amado. No one answered the door when they knocked, but they heard a television playing loudly, so they turned the unlocked doorknob and found the bodies, Amado said.

Amado said the victims appeared to have been shot between the eyes.

Los Angeles police could not say late Wednesday whether the responding officers tried to enter the apartment.

Earlier in the day, Det. Frank Bishop said police had no suspects and had not ruled out the possibility of a murder-suicide, even though they had not found a weapon. There was no indication of a forced entry, he said.

“There’s a lot of theories floating around right now,” Bishop said.

Detectives withheld the names of the victims pending verification of their identities.

Amado said the victims were probably in their mid- to late 20s, and lived alone in the apartment, though they had children who lived with relatives. He also said he was confused as to why something so horrible happened to such seemingly pleasant neighbors.

“They were straight-up people,” he said. “Good people. But you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors.”

Francisco Merino, 15, and his uncle Carlos Merino, 23, who live across the hall, said that in recent days they had heard the couple’s TV playing loudly at odd hours, and noisy alarms going off.

But Carlos Merino said he never heard the couple argue. “They were real friendly and polite. They’d say hi, ‘have a good day’ and everything.”

Francisco Merino said that he was in the hall when officers first arrived early Wednesday, but that he was not drunk and had simply been locked out of his apartment.

He also said he had not made the anonymous call.

“I was locked out of my house and I was tired, and laid down right there,” Francisco Merino said. “They said someone had called them and said something about someone being dead.”