The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office has updated the cause of death for a man who drowned in the lake outside of SoFi Stadium.
Javier Bautista-Reyes, 45, was found at the bottom of the lake, which is roughly 15 feet deep, in the early morning of July 6.
Reyes wasn’t publicly identified until early August where the cause of death was “deferred” pending additional investigation.
His autopsy report details there were no drugs in his system and the final determination was he drowned.
According to the responding officer from Inglewood Police Department, the deceased was observed walking near the theatre at the south side of the stadium which is nearest to Arbor Vitae Street around 6:00 am.
He was then observed “bobbing” in the water and then went under in a span of three minutes by 6:03 am.
He wasn’t pulled from the water until three and a half hours later.

Inglewood Mayor James Butts Jr. called a press conference to discuss the events while Inglewood Police Chief Mark Fronterotta stood silently beside him not saying a word.
“At about 6:01 a.m. a male hispanic, 45, unidentified entered the SoFi Stadium parking lot by trespassing at 6:03 security personnel called Inglewood Police Department and at 6:13 he was seen entering the man made lake and that was the last time he was seen above the water and at 6:21 SEB and LA County Fire were called and recovery was made around 9:48 this morning,” said the mayor. “We don’t know why he was on the property.”
“They have plenty of surveillance and basically what they saw was the gentleman entering from the Century side of the property and migrating his way towards the lake. Hopping a fence to get in that area, getting into the lake, and moving out to the middle of it,” said the mayor.
The mayor admitted he didn’t see the surveillance footage prior to calling the media to city hall.
Nowhere in the report does the officer state they observed him hop a fence near Century Blvd. as alleged by Butts.
Why would that important detail be omitted from the official record of Mr. Reyes’ death?
2 Comments
I appreciate the understanding and condolences on behalf of my uncle his wife and two daughters. Knowing there was opportunity to save him completely destroys my heart.
First we should sympathize with the victim and his family no one deserves to drown when itt could have been avoided by wise building restrictions.
As to Why Butts chose to change or make up or embellish facts?
Really was someone expecting truth? Ya’ll haven’t figured out he simply can’t..or won’t ? What does it take to figure out that words coming from James Butts are not often truthful?
Let’s see we paid how much when Butts (with the rubber stamper blessings) sued Tixiera under the false (not true) charge of copyright infringement when snippets of Council meeting videos were used to show Butts’ behavior on you tube.
Butts point blank lied that he NEVER SAID “go choke yourself Diane” to a resident whose comments he didn’t like (oops it was caught on tape —-and then ;Butts had the video edited so it did not appear). At least we know why the editor-employee got that significant salary increase. Routine editing to delete what THE TEAM doesn’t want folks to know is the price we pay for not attending meetings in person…..EVER WONDER why it takes so long to get council meeting minutes? – in the Clerk Horton years sometimes there were SEVERAL MONTH DELAYS!
Butts lied about the tech company wanting to build a tech facility at 104th and Prairie.
Butts very knowingly misrepresented that all stadium building expenses would be privately funded with out mentioning that little detail that city tax payers would pay “reimbursement costs” for all the roads and infrastructure and to maintain the public area.
So was the prior embellishment because there were not safety precautions? Will we be sued for not requiring safety fencing around the man-made lake? Why on earth was the “visual water feature” permitted to be so deep – Disney imagineers convince millions the Columbia and Mark Twain and Jungle cruise are more then knee deep?
Let’s back up for a reason to make the victim the bad guy. Butts went out of his way to LIE that residents voted for the stadium when in fact only the five council members voted for it!….Realizing the Petition was a “public record” the council members voted to destroy the document they said was signed by residents who wanted a stadium rather than the right to vote IF we wanted a stadium at all! If the Mayor’s claim was true shredding would not have been necessary they could have simply made the wording (without signatures to protect privacy) available!
Basically some might graciously suggest that telling the simply truth is not within the skill set of the current Mayor – not about little things not about big things, not about his public life and not about his private life ( which most couldn’t care less about until it costs us the big bucks.)……
What ya say we think cartoon time when we consider the multiple lawsuits that a lie here a falsehood there look like ?
Can you visualize the employee/ girlfriend (while married) thing as the largest (most costly in $) elephant in our living room? But wait there is another lawsuit, oh wait there are several aren’t there ? It is not just one really big million dollar elephant it is a big one and a small herd isn’t it. For starters shall we think small elephants for those three traffic accident issues near USC-our car vs the car with the right-of-way and the sitting still motorcycle officer -not just auto repair but the long term health and lost employment suits, and the Dr. Wanda Brown (our elected Treasurer) being denied access to her office as needed to do her job lawsuit? Can you think of others that we need to include in our imaginary elephant herd? Unfortunately for residents those fees and settlements or judgements will be paid by Inglewood tax payers….Yep, do you think we should probably keep readjusting our mental image of those small elephants to grow and grow while all those Attorney fees just keep on coming?
Shall we close with the most insulting of fabrications used to make attending council meetings hard for anyone employed 9-5 to attend? Did we forget the clever almost theatrical play used to avoiding public input ? Some have suggested it was elder abuse to create a “field trip” for the residents of the convalescent facility on Manchester (some delirious and some with IV drips) to a council meeting and the accompanying falsified Petition to change meeting times to 2pm. Yes the “PETITION” WAS FAKE – it was a cut and paste of the guest register of the care facility and one of the persons whose signature appeared came to the meeting and said NO I SIGNED NO SUCH PETITION! Alas the Mayor and Council verbally insulted and belittled the woman and proceeded to change the meeting times from 7 pm to 2 pm !, Surprise, surprise those convalescent seniors did not come back again ! Do you think the councilmembers acted in your best interest with that false presentation? Would you be surprised to discover a few of the orchestrators of the “field trip” became full time City Employees and continue to receive bonuses?
False narratives are not acceptable, not from staff, not from councilmembers and certainly not from a former Police Chief Mayor!
If the City pools and backyard home pools, all much smaller and shallower require security fencing shouldn’t the lake ? How on earth was that overlooked? (The Hollywood Park Racetrack lake had multiple barriers to get to it.shouldn’t someone in the over paid executive management team or that large group of attorneys on retainers screamed LIABILITY LIABILITY think of the LIABILITY!
Is the Inglewood elephant count approaching that of the L.A. Zoo?