Man Is Burned to Death in Downtown Street Fight

An unidentified man died Monday after he was doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire during a street fight in an area crowded with transients and that is the focus of an effort to redevelop historic downtown Los Angeles.

No suspects were in custody and details of the crime were few after investigators spent much of the day working the scene outside the Popular Center office building at Spring and 4th streets. It is in an area frequented by lawyers and other professionals during the day and by street people at night.

Police said the dispute between “several males,” probably transients, began about 3:30 a.m. at 5th and Main streets. The cause of the argument was unknown, police said.

“One of the individuals was in possession of a possible flammable liquid, which came in contact with one or more persons,” Detective Mark Rooney said. The victim, he said, “caught fire and expired at the scene.”

Coroner’s spokesman Bob Dambacher said the dead man was “badly burned and there’s no way to identify him visually. Hopefully we can get some fingerprints off him.”

An autopsy was scheduled.

Statistics on immolations in Los Angeles were not available, but “We don’t have very darn many of them,” Dambacher said.

By midmorning, only a black, ashen spot about two feet in diameter remained on the pavement where the body was found.

It was pretty much business as usual in the area that some local residents call “Heroin Alley.” Police acknowledge drug use is a problem there. A handful of transients passed by the aging buildings along 4th, just east of Spring, while a worker hosed the smell of urine out of a trash-strewn alley.

“I didn’t see nothing,” yelled a man with a salt-and-pepper beard. The transient was angry that a stranger had even approached.

Another man was just as angry when queried. “I’m just waiting for a bus. Leave me in peace,” he said.

Harvey Higgins, a security guard at Popular Center, said he arrived at work shortly after 6 a.m. and caught a glimpse of the victim just outside the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency offices in the building.

“He was all burned up,” Higgins said. “I couldn’t tell if there were clothes on him or not.”

CRA Administrator Ed Avila called the immolation “horrendous,” but said such violence is uncharacteristic of the area.

Spring Street was known as the “Wall Street of the West” until new skyscrapers on downtown’s west side lured away the big banks and brokerage houses in the 1970s.

The CRA has been working to restore the shine of the tarnished street since the early 1980s, when the first redevelopment projects were built. The facades of new and renovated buildings shine alongside the dingy faces of their original and untouched counterparts.

The Ronald Reagan State Building on Spring, about a block away from the crime scene, is probably the CRA’s biggest success, Avila said. Eventually the building, which opened last fall, will be the workplace for about 3,000 people.

Despite its successes, the CRA has been stymied in its efforts to create a modern urban village that would be not only the workplace of middle-class professionals, but also their home.

For example, at Premiere Towers, a condominium project at 6th and Spring, units have been slow to sell and some are now being rented.Redevelopment officials concede that crime in the area is affecting sales.

Crime is on the rise in the city’s historic core--an area stretching from 2nd to 9th streets between Hill and Main streets--police say. In 1989, there were 11 homicides, 296 assaults with a deadly weapon and 699 robberies, Officer Carla Allen said. There were 18 homicides last year, 472 ADWs and 1,093 robberies. As of Sunday, there had been no homicides in 1991, but there were 217 ADWs and 429 robberies, Allen said. Statistics for other categories were not available.

“Redevelopment is to change and eliminate blight and that doesn’t happen overnight,” Avila said. “Without question, (Spring Street) is turning and has turned the corner.”

Such change cannot come soon enough for some local residents.

“We don’t walk on the west side of Spring Street between 4th and 3rd,” said Bette Penzell, 68, leader of the condo owners group at Premiere Towers. “We call that ‘Heroin Alley. It’s a very bad neighborhood.

“If you live in this neighborhood, you have to live carefully.”