Joey Melendrez, a 25-year-old Latino man, was spending the first hours of November 1, 2025 at a cemetery in the Sylmar area of Los Angeles County when violence tore through the quiet hillside grounds. Shortly before 2:30 a.m., he was with several other people in the 13000 block of Lopez Canyon Road, near the Glen Haven & Sholom Memorial Park, a cemetery tucked away off the canyon road.
Deputies later said that the group was parked there together in the darkness when a car approached on the road.
According to investigators, the vehicle was a small sedan that did not stop as it came by the cemetery. Someone inside opened fire, sending multiple rounds toward the gathered crowd. In the confusion and panic that followed, people scrambled for cover as the shots rang out among the headstones and trees. When the gunfire ended and the car sped away into the night, Melendrez had been struck in the upper torso. A second person was also hit but managed to get to a hospital on their own with injuries described as non-life-threatening.
Deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arrived within minutes, responding to reports of gunfire at the cemetery. They found Melendrez gravely wounded, suffering from gunshot injuries to his chest and upper body, and he was pronounced dead at the scene despite efforts to save him. At least one woman at the cemetery, who told authorities she was his partner, tearfully explained that he had been shot in the chest as the drive-by unfolded. The scene, lit by emergency vehicle lights against the rows of graves, quickly turned from a gathering place into the site of a homicide investigation.
In the days that followed, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner publicly identified the victim as Joey Melendrez and confirmed that he had died at the cemetery in Sylmar on November 1, 2025. Memorial and death-record listings added his name to the growing tally of people lost to gun violence in Los Angeles County and across California, noting only his age, date of death, and the fact that his life ended in a cemetery. These brief entries, stark and factual, stood in for the fuller story of who he had been before a passing car and a hail of bullets cut his life short.
Detectives opened a homicide investigation focused on finding the gunman or gunmen responsible for the drive-by attack. They canvassed the area and appealed to the public for assistance, urging anyone with information to contact the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau or submit anonymous tips through a crime hotline. Despite the gravity of the crime and the fact that multiple people had been present when the shooting erupted, authorities did not immediately release any detailed description of the shooter or the vehicle beyond calling it a small sedan.
As of the latest available reports, investigators had not announced any arrests in connection with the killing, nor had they publicly identified a suspect or established a clear motive for the attack at the cemetery. The case remained an open homicide investigation, with Melendrez remembered primarily through official records, brief news accounts, and the quiet acknowledgment that an early-morning drive-by shooting in a Sylmar cemetery had taken the life of a young man and left his family, friends, and community waiting for answers that had yet to come.
