1 Man Stabbed to Death, 2 Others Hurt

One man was stabbed to death and two others suffered minor injuries during a fight early Saturday morning, police said.

Patrol officers responded at 12:53 a.m. to a fight in the 4100 block of Fulton Avenue, said Det. Richard Yep of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Van Nuys Division. They found blood spattered near the scene, but there was no one in sight.

Moments later, one of the victims called for an ambulance from a nearby location, leading police to three Armenian men who had been stabbed. The most seriously hurt, Rubik Babayan, 32, of Glendale, had been stabbed multiple times in the upper torso, Yep said. He was taken to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where he died at 5:10 a.m.

The two other victims, 27-year-old Tigran Malekon of Hollywood and 23-year-old Garen Avetian of Glendale, were driven by friends to Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, police said. They were treated for minor injuries to their hands and buttocks.

Several people apparently witnessed the brawl, and police are trying to track down and interview them, Yep said. Detectives are not sure how many suspects were involved or what the motive was.

At this time, police have no reason to believe the violence was motivated by ethnic rivalry. Last spring, tensions between Armenians and Latinos flared in Glendale, leading to the killing of a Latino high school student and, less than a week later, the wounding of an Armenian teen in a drive-by shooting.