As a gentle breeze rustled the trees at Grand View Memorial Park in Glendale, friends and family of Vanik Voskanyan took turns tossing a fistful of dirt and a white rose on the casket of their loved one, who was stabbed to death in Beverly Hills last month.
Voskanyan, 40, was slain in an alleyway behind the 400 block of North Palm Drive the night of Aug. 30 and died from multiple sharp-force injuries in a hospital shortly after, according to Beverly Hills police and the L.A. County medical examiner.
The suspected assailant, 19-year-old Beverly Hills resident Conoray Lawantara, was charged with murder and pleaded not guilty earlier this month, according to L.A. County Superior Court records.
A neighbor said that Lawantara angrily confronted a man who was going through the trash in the alleyway. She and others living nearby described the victim as appearing homeless, a characterization that spread quickly through media reports — much to the distress of those who knew Voskanyan.
“Vanik was not a homeless person,” longtime friend Levon Grigoryan told The Times. “It is painful for his family and friends to see him reduced to a single description that does not tell the truth about the person he was.”
Grigoryan said that Voskanyan lived in Glendale with his mother and brother and was an intelligent man who loved reading books and was well versed on politics, sports and current events.
“Vanik was much more than the circumstances of his death,” he said. “He was a son, a brother, a relative, a friend, and someone who was loved and remembered by many people.”
On Monday, more than 100 people dressed in black gathered at St. Leon Armenian Cathedral in Burbank. The Catholic service, conducted in Armenian, was open-casket, allowing mourners a final chance to say goodbye as they filed by the altar at the conclusion of the ceremony.
The group then reconvened at the Glendale cemetery, where a priest said prayers over the casket, which was gently lowered into the ground as teary-eyed friends and family members watched.
Armen Akopyan said that his nephew Voskanyan was kind, giving and soft-hearted and that family members were shocked when they received a call from the Beverly Hills Police Department informing them that he had been killed.
“I hope justice is served,” Akopyan said. “Because [the suspect] took an innocent man’s life.”
Voskanyan was born in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, and moved to Glendale in 2009, Akopyan said. Voskanyan had studied in Armenia to be a dentist and later worked a variety of jobs in America including in construction, jewelry and as a dental technician.
“He’ll be always in our thoughts and prayers,” Akopyan said.
Grigoryan met Voskanyan more than eight years ago through the Armenian community and said his friend had a unique mind and was always a source of fascinating conversation.
He said Voskanyan had a difficult life and a lot of problems but was deeply loved by friends and family. Grigoryan said he didn’t know why his friend was in Beverly Hills the night of the attack and he was shocked by the seemingly senseless act of violence.
“It doesn’t matter how the guy was living at that moment,” Grigoryan said. “You don’t have to take a knife and kill somebody.”
Lawantara, for his part, has asserted that he used a 3.9-inch knife in self-defense. He also suffered injuries during the altercation and was transferred to a hospital for treatment. He was then charged with murder on Sept. 2, and bail was set at $2 million.
At his Sept. 3 arraignment, Lawantara’s attorney Debra White said that, after a verbal altercation escalated, Voskanyan reached for her client’s neck, according to reporting from the California Post. She said he produced a knife only when Voskanyan refused to get off of him.
Judge Keith Schwartz fired back, saying that there was no need for Lawantara to have confronted Voskanyan in the first place, noting that he “stabbed him repeatedly, like in a horror movie,” the Post reported.
Lawantara posted bond and was released from custody Sept. 4, according to L.A. County Sheriff’s Department records. He is due back in court Nov. 5 to set a date for a preliminary hearing, according to court records.
The post He was fatally stabbed in a Beverly Hills alley. His family says portrayal of him was all wrong appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
