Jonisha Mendoza was a 31-year-old Hispanic/Latino woman from Reseda who was found inside an apartment in the 18400 block of Kittridge Street near Reseda Boulevard on Sunday, December 13, 2020. West Valley officers responded about 8:25 a.m., discovered Mendoza unresponsive with a gunshot wound, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. The apartment where she was killed was not her home, and police said that raised immediate questions about why she was there and who else had been present.

Early reports described the case as a homicide investigation and said the killer remained at large the day after her death. Mendoza’s mother, Patricia Hernandez, said Mendoza was a mother of three and later said it took investigators eight days to locate the person who lived in the apartment, a delay she feared may have affected the investigation. A family member later criticized the court resolution, saying a deal produced only a short sentence and did not feel like true justice to the family.