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On the afternoon of October 2, 2006 my close friend of 20 years James Woodson was standing in the courtyard of his apartment building talking to his wife of 6 months, Pena. He had just gotten home from work, had gotten his mail and was lingering by the pool which was surrounded on three sides by a two story apartment building with the fourth side being open to the street. Fifteen witnesses in the apartment and on the street heard the gunshot and smelled gun smoke. Woodson fell instantly and was unresponsive, though in the panic the .38 caliber bullet wound in the left center of his back went unnoticed until he arrived at the hospital 20 minutes later, where he was pronounced dead.

Police investigating the incident interviewed all the residents of the building except one. An ex cop and terminal cancer patient named Daniel Lisuk. Several of the residents of the building informed the investigating officers that Woodson and Lisuk were not on friendly terms. But the cops acted like that didn’t matter, and stated in their reports that all of the residents in the building had been eliminated as potential suspects, concluding officially that Woodson had been struck by a stray bullet fired from several blocks away and that it had been done randomly. Yes, they actually contended that the bullet which struck Woodson in the heart was a random event.

They never bothered to ask Mr. Lisuk any questions or even knock on his door, or so they said. Five days later, Lisuk took his own life with a .25 caliber pistol in his apartment. The police again dismissed the possibility of Lisuk being the murderer since the gun used to kill Woodson was a .38. Without further investigation, they reported the suicide as unrelated to Woodson’s murder. It wasn’t until a relative of Lisuk’s cleaned out his apartment that he discovered the murder weapon in a drawer. He went to the police who were able to match the weapon to the round that killed Woodson. So the LAPD let this guy decide for himself over five days, if there was anybody else he didn’t like and wanted to kill before killing himself. I have a big problem with that.

This post was submitted by William Steinberg via CopBlock.org’s “submit a post” tab. If you have a story about police, or the issues facing policing today, consider sharing it with the readers of CopBlock.org, simply click here to get started.

I (Ademo) tried to find a news article about the suicide and/or murder but was unable to turn up anything solid. I did find this blogspot post that also questioned the official story. IMO, it seems that the police, knowingly or not, did help cover this up. Either by not investigating Daniel Lisuk as they did the other residents or by simply not caring after the murder weapon was found. Either way, it highlights an example of a crime with a victim and no justice is sought or found by the state institution of police.