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Los Angeles police have blocked the county coroner’s office from releasing details about the death of a teen girl whose body was found in the trunk of a car registered to the singer d4vd, the medical examiner’s office said Monday.
Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found dead on Sept. 8 in an impounded Tesla in Los Angeles just after her 15th birthday. Several news outlets reported the car belonged to d4vd, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke, 20.
The medical examiner’s office said in a statement that it has received a “court order, initiated by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), to place a security hold” on Rivas Hernandez’s case.
The order issued on Friday demands that “no records or details associated with the case, including the cause and manner of death and Medical Examiner report, can be released or posted on the website until further notice,” the statement said.
The order came several days after multiple Los Angeles TV stations reported police consider the Houston-born alt-pop singer a suspect, citing anonymous sources. The L.A. police department has not confirmed that, and d4vd’s lawyer Blair Berk did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
LAPD Capt. Mike Bland said the security hold was not sought to undermine transparency, but to maintain the integrity of the police investigation, which is ongoing by detectives with the robbery homicide division.
“It was done so that our investigators get the information before the media and the public,” Bland said.
Chief medical examiner Dr. Odey Ukpo said such security holds are “virtually unheard of in other counties” in California.
“We are dedicated to serving our community with full transparency; however, the law precludes us from doing so while the court order remains in this case,” Ukpo said.
Rivas Hernandez’s body “was found severely decomposed,” the medical examiner’s office said in a September statement, and she had likely been “deceased inside the vehicle for an extended period of time before being found.”
Rivas Hernandez was last seen in April 2024 in Lake Elsinore where she was raised, about 95 kilometres southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
D4vd gained popularity among Gen Z for his blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi pop. He went viral on TikTok in 2022 with the hit Romantic Homicide, which peaked at No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. He then signed with Darkroom and Interscope Records, and released his debut EP Petals to Thorns and a follow-up, The Lost Petals, in 2023.
D4vd had been on tour for his first full-length album, Withered, when Rivas Hernandez’s body was found. The last two North American shows, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, along with a scheduled performance at L.A.’s Grammy Museum, were cancelled, as was a subsequent European tour that was set to begin in Norway on Oct. 1.
