LAPD officials this week announced that Alt-R&B artist David “D4vd” Burke, 20, is being considered a suspect in the death of 14 year-old Celeste Hernandez, a runaway whose body cops discovered in the trunk of a Tesla registered to Burke, a few days after it was towed from a spot in the Hollywood Hills where it had been abandoned by Burke on or before July 29th, People Magazine reports.
Hernandez’s remains were, horrifically, not intact and in an advanced state of decomposition when a worker at the impound lot noticed a foul odor emanating from the front trunk of the car belonging to the “Romantic Homicide” artist on September 8th, with it taking until the 17th for the medical examiner to make a positive ID on the teen. People’s reporting on her short life describes her as a troubled youth from Riverside County who ghosted on her family no fewer than three times in recent years, the last being in April 2024. Her family by that point was aware that she’d been dating someone named “David” but had no further contact with her after a brief call the next month.
People cites the Los Angeles Times’s reporting that Burke has a tattoo saying “Shhh…” on his right index finger and that Celeste’s mom had told TMZ her girl had the same on her very same finger.
Why it took homicide detectives in Los Angeles two goddamned months to name Burke as a suspect in the girl’s death is not clear. The easiest answer lies in California’s lack of a felony abuse of a corpse statute – the usual go-to in other states to keep a suspect held without bail when cops and DAs have this strong of circumstantial probable cause but still need more time to bring a homicide case before a grand jury. The state legislature might want to get on that copy and paste job.