‘The street knows who did it’: Authorities offer $10,000 reward in South L.A. killing

Authorities appealed to the public Thursday for leads in the unsolved 2024 killing of a 21-year-old woman who was gunned down in a South Los Angeles alley.

Lanai Dees was driving her white Mercedes Benz in an alley off Century Boulevard in the Westmont neighborhood at 12:40 a.m. on Nov. 17 when someone in a passing dark-colored SUV opened fire, Lt. Steven De Jong of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

Dees, fatally wounded, crashed into a concrete staircase in the alley, De Jong said.

At a news conference Thursday near where Dees died, De Jong said the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors was offering a $10,000 reward for leads.

“We believe someone in the community holds key information about this homicide,” the lieutenant said, flanked by members of Dees’ family.

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Her mother, Dahlin Dees, said Dees was studying to become a nurse and described her as “the light of our family.”

The “cowards” who killed her daughter “just took it and dimmed it,” she said. “It’s hard to walk past her room every day and know she won’t come out and say, ‘Good morning, Mom. I love you, Mom.’”

Dees’ grandfather, Odis Sneed, said if such a killing had occurred in the Watts of his childhood, “the hood would not let this get away. Somebody would come forward and say something.”

“The street knows who did it,” he said. “If you know something and don’t say anything about it, that means you’re in agreement. If you don’t say something, that means you’re OK with a 21-year-old child being gunned down in the street like a dog.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is also offering a $15,000 reward for information about the homicide of Raejonette Morgan. On July 2, 2024, the 22-year-old was shot to death in her white Mercedes Benz on Vermont Avenue, about two miles from where Dees was killed.

De Jong said detectives do not believe the two killings are related. He asked that anyone with information contact homicide detectives at (323) 890-5500.