Family Seeks Justice for Father of Two Killed in Harbor City

It was after midnight, June 17, 2017 when Kristen Turman heard a knock on the door. She thought her son had misplaced his keys after a night out.

“When I said who is it and they said LAPD homicide,” she recalls, “my whole life was just flipped upside down.”

Her son, 20-year-old Anthony Iniguez, had been found shot in the head in the middle of the crosswalk at 252nd Street and Normandie in Harbor City.

“I remember just screaming trying to wake up my whole house,” she says, “I remember standing in the hall and just screaming.”

LAPD South Bureau Homicide has been investigating this since the day the call came into 911. Numerous neighbors calling to say they only heard one gunshot. But no surveillance video and five years later, there still isn’t enough information to make an arrest.

“It’s just been so hard,” Turman says through tears that haven’t dried in five years of grief, “it doesn’t ever get easier. Every day is a struggle to wake up in the morning.”

Anthony was a dad to two little boys. The youngest, only months old when his father was killed.

“He was so excited when he had his children and then he died when his youngest son was 5 months. That poor baby, we have pictures, but he doesn’t remember his dad like his older brother and it hurts my heart,” Turman says, tears falling again, “because our boys need their fathers in their lives. My grandkids got cheated out of that.”

Anthony was a high school athlete – excelled in football, baseball, basketball. His friends called him “Knucklehead” because they say he hit so hard on the gridiron.

Turman simply called him, “son,” and says his smile could light up a room. In the last five years since his case has gone cold, she says she’s been trying to get donations to help raise money to get billboards around Harbor City to share her son’s story – and a $50,000 reward for information.

“There’s people out there that know something, somebody knows something and I’m hoping this money will be motivation right now with how bad the economy is and people are struggling, hoping this amount of money will be motivating for people to talk,” she says.

And while her grief hits her every day, she says she spent much of the last years looking for ways to rebuild her faith in God and to find forgiveness for her son’s killer.

“I held onto anger for so long,” she says, “and I couldn’t find any peace. My only peace was to forgive them. They didn’t start out as murderers. They started out as a child, influenced by the wrong people. That kid before that is still there. They don’t have to be a murderer forever.”

Anyone with information in the case is asked to call LAPD South Bureau Homicide at 323-786-5113 or for anonymous tips – with the ability to still get the $50k reward – they can call LAPD CrimeStoppers at1-800-222-8477.

Source: NBC Los Angeles