At 3:30 in the afternoon on May 20, 2026, the Hollywood Walk of Fame was doing what it always does in late spring — drawing tourists in waves, costumed performers working the crowd near the TCL Chinese Theater, the bronze stars underfoot polished to a dull glint by a million feet. Berry Le’Mar Henderson, 37, was not a tourist. He was a downtown Los Angeles resident waiting at a bus stop near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas Avenue, one of the busiest intersections on one of the most photographed streets in America. He would be dead within the hour.
What happened in the minutes that followed was captured in part by surveillance cameras and cell phone footage, and the sequence of events would take LAPD detectives eight days to fully reconstruct before the fourth and final suspect was arrested. The case illuminates how a seemingly chaotic street incident — witnessed by dozens of bystanders, in broad daylight, in one of the city’s most surveilled tourist corridors — still requires methodical forensic and investigative work before prosecutors can build a murder charge that holds.
The Attack Unfolds in Public
By the accounts of witnesses and investigators, the confrontation began when a dog belonging to Patrick Randall Perry, 55, attacked Henderson at the bus stop. Henderson, in what detectives and family members describe as an act of self-defense, pulled out a knife and stabbed the dog.
That moment triggered what came next. Perry and at least three other men — Bruce Lamont Fuller Jr., Isaul Hernandez, and Robert Anthony Garcia — confronted Henderson. They chased him across the street. What followed was not a single-assailant attack. The group beat Henderson with a metal bat and a baton attached to a Taser. At some point during the assault, Henderson dropped the knife he had used on the dog. According to investigators, Perry then picked it up and stabbed Henderson with it.
Henderson suffered multiple stab wounds. He was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead a short time later.
The scene — filmed from multiple angles by bystanders, recorded by area surveillance systems, and unfolding steps from where tourists were still taking photos — represented the kind of evidence cluster that LAPD homicide investigators rarely encounter: abundant, immediate, and complicated by the group nature of the violence.
How the Case Became a Murder Investigation
Three of the four suspects — Fuller, Hernandez, and Garcia — were taken into custody the same day. All three were held on $2 million bail on suspicion of murder.
But Perry was not arrested until May 28, eight days after Henderson died.
That gap matters in any homicide investigation. It reflects the reality that even when a death occurs in full public view, establishing legal culpability for murder requires more than witness accounts and video. Detectives working through LAPD’s Hollywood Division had to establish who landed which blow, what role each participant played, and — critically — who delivered the fatal stab wounds.
In California, murder charges can extend to participants under the felony murder rule and aiding and abetting statutes, meaning not every defendant needs to have personally inflicted the killing blow. But prosecutors still need to establish each individual’s specific role to support charges that will survive courtroom scrutiny. For Perry specifically, detectives needed to establish his identity as the dog’s owner, trace his movements through the attack, and link him to the stabbing itself before presenting the case to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.
All four men were formally charged in connection with Henderson’s death in early June 2026.
The Coroner’s Role in Establishing Cause and Manner
When a person dies from injuries sustained in a violent confrontation, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office takes jurisdiction. The coroner’s investigation runs parallel to — and often informs — the LAPD homicide investigation.
In stab wound cases, the forensic autopsy is central to establishing the cause of death with legal precision. Forensic pathologists examine the number, location, depth, and trajectory of each wound. In a multi-assailant case like this one, where blunt force trauma from bats and a Taser baton was also inflicted, the autopsy must distinguish among the types of injury and identify which were lethal. This distinction is not academic — it directly affects how the DA charges each defendant and how defense attorneys respond.
Stab wound autopsies also generate evidence that extends beyond cause of death: wound track analysis can indicate the approximate length of the blade, the force applied, and the angle of entry, all of which can corroborate or contradict witness accounts of how the attack unfolded. In cases where a suspect claims a victim was already dying from another cause, the pathologist’s findings become a centerpiece of the prosecution.
The coroner’s office issues a formal finding of cause of death — in this case, consistent with stab wounds — and a manner of death classification of homicide. That classification is legally significant: it is the coroner, not law enforcement, who makes that official determination, and it is that finding that anchors the murder charge.
A Neighborhood With a History of Violence
The killing did not happen in a vacuum. The intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas has a documented history of violent confrontations, and Perry himself had a prior documented connection to it. According to investigators and reporting from local outlets, Perry had been arrested in January 2024 near the Church of Scientology’s Los Angeles Information Center on the Walk of Fame after allegedly punching someone. A local activist told reporters he had previously reported Perry to LAPD, providing video he said showed Perry threatening someone with a collapsible baton — the same type of weapon used in the attack on Henderson.
Perry’s prior record extended back further. Court records from Sacramento County showed convictions between 2012 and 2015 for assault likely to cause great bodily injury, domestic violence, possession of ammunition as a felon, and fleeing police.
That documented history of prior violent conduct will almost certainly become relevant in trial proceedings. In California, prior acts of violence are admissible under Evidence Code section 1101 when they are offered to show intent, motive, or a common scheme. For a defense team, the challenge will be to argue that the killing — however brutal — arose from a genuine dispute over an injured dog, not from premeditated or malicious intent.
The Public Nature of the Evidence
Few murder cases are witnessed by as many people as this one was. That sounds like an investigator’s advantage, and in some respects it is. Cell phone footage from multiple angles, surveillance feeds from commercial properties along the boulevard, and dozens of potential witnesses gave LAPD an unusually rich evidentiary foundation from the start.
But public killings with multiple participants also generate evidentiary complexity. Witness accounts in chaotic, fast-moving assaults are often contradictory on specific details even when witnesses agree on the general shape of events. Video captures what the camera sees, not what investigators need to prove — angles matter, resolution matters, and gaps in footage can become points of contention. Defense attorneys routinely challenge the interpretation of surveillance video, and in multi-defendant cases each defendant’s attorney has an incentive to shift focus toward another participant.
Henderson’s family, speaking publicly after the charges were filed, described a son and brother who was trying to protect himself when the confrontation escalated beyond any reasonable response. That narrative — a man defending against a dog attack who became the victim of a lethal group assault — now belongs to the prosecutors and the courts. The forensic record assembled by LAPD homicide investigators and the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office will be what sustains or undermines it.
The stars on Hollywood Boulevard have been walked over by millions of people without incident. On May 20, one of them became the backdrop for a killing that will spend years moving through the Los Angeles criminal justice system — its outcome determined not by the spectacle of the street, but by the methodical work done afterward, in examination rooms and interview rooms, by the people whose job it is to reconstruct what the cameras could not fully show.