Leslie Jordan’s cause of death ‘deferred’ by L.A. coroner pending more investigation
Los Angeles coroner’s inquest has ruled that the death of Leslie Jordan, the 26-year-old former UCLA student whose death has become a national scandal, will not be classified as a homicide but will be deferred until further investigation is completed, the Los Angeles Timesreports.
The report from coroner’s investigator William Fleitz has been made public for the first time Wednesday. The investigation, he writes, will determine the manner of death, which won’t be designated a homicide until the results of an autopsy are known.
Jordan’s death has reignited the debate over the Los Angeles Police Department’s aggressive tactics in its pursuit of gang members who were suspected of murder. Officers in the LAPD’s vice department, which had been investigating the killing of Jordan’s friend, took her cell phone and her car keys. They went to her apartment the day her body was found on the beach and took pictures of her naked and in sexual poses, and they took her clothes off.
At the time of the killing, officers were investigating a suspected homicide at an adult bookstore and were told Jordan was there.
Jordan, who had been studying at UCLA, died after she and friends went to a birthday party to celebrate the birthday of one of her friends and then got into a fight with two men, who were trying to break up the party. The friends went their separate ways and were last seen heading to a nearby beach.
Police arrested two of the alleged killers in December. They were released without charges pending the results of their investigation.
UCLA, which conducted its own investigation into Jordan’s death, has been criticized for not doing enough to prevent the incident.
The university says it found no errors in the police report, which was reviewed at length by university lawyers.
At the hearing on Wednesday, Fleitz wrote that he was “disappointed but not surprised by the manner of the death” because Jordan’s cause of death “was not determined by autopsy.” Fleitz says the results of the autopsy will be made public “within the next few days.”
He wrote that
