Antonio Wilson was walking to a shopping center near Vermont Avenue and 43rd Street with a neighbor on November 14, 2017, when a white car pulled up and someone inside opened fire. He collapsed at the scene and, after undergoing surgeries for gunshot wounds to his colon, liver and heart, died 16 days later on November 30, 2017. Nine years on, the case remains unsolved, and his mother says the pain has never faded.
Wilson, known to friends as Tony, was a 27-year-old aspiring rapper who was studying to become an ultrasound technician to support his young family, according to the Los Angeles Times. As reported by ABC7, he had gone out for dinner and, in his mother Nicole Williams's words, never made it home. He was walking to pick up tacos at a store just a block from his South Los Angeles home when he was standing in the parking lot and the vehicle pulled up alongside him, per the same account.
The shopping center was crowded that night, according to LAPD, and detectives say the parking lot's security cameras did not capture the white car's license plate. Investigators believe the car was likely a BMW — described in a 2018 LAPD news conference as a white, four-door BMW 3-Series sedan from model year 2010 or newer that fled eastbound from the scene — and detectives at the time also described a potential suspect as roughly 5 feet 11 inches tall and 165 pounds. The station's report notes the shopping center has since become an active construction site, and detectives say identifying the occupants of that white car could break the case.
A Case Detectives Revisit Every Day
LAPD homicide detective Nellie Knight has said the shooting appears to be a case of mistaken identity, telling ABC7 she believes Wilson was not the intended target. That assessment echoes what detectives said years earlier: in a 2018 press conference, Knight stated that investigators found no evidence connecting Wilson to any gang activity, undercutting any assumption that he was targeted deliberately.
Knight says she opens Wilson's case file every day. LAPD continues to seek information from witnesses to the shooting, and the department is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to an arrest. That reward was formally established under Section 19.123 of the Los Angeles Administrative Code, which allows the City Council to issue 60-day renewable reward notices to encourage public tips in unsolved violent crimes, according to LAPD Online. Anyone with information is asked to call the 24-hour LAPD anonymous tip line at 1-877-527-3247.
A Mother's Nine-Year Fight
Nicole Williams has spent nine years passing out flyers and attending rallies, telling ABC7 that her family will not stop until justice is served. She has said her grief has not eased with time. Beyond her own search for answers, Williams has thrown herself into supporting other families who have lost loved ones to gun violence, organizing annual holiday support events for South Los Angeles families grieving similar losses, per the Los Angeles Times.
Wilson's son, Kordai Wilson, has grown into a community advocate himself, pushing for a safer Los Angeles in his father's memory. Nicole Williams and her family say they will continue pushing for justice, and detectives and relatives alike remain focused on the same goal: finding the person responsible for Wilson's killing.
A Lawsuit Over Security at the Shooting Site
Williams has also taken the fight to civil court. She filed a wrongful death and premises liability lawsuit against the owners of the shopping center at 43rd and Vermont, alleging the complex was a known site for prior violent crimes — including homicides, drive-by shootings and robberies — and lacked adequate security, according to research compiled by crime-tracking site Crime Solvers Central. Such premises liability suits typically hinge on whether a property owner failed to take reasonable security measures against crime that was foreseeable.
Cold Cases Amid a Historic Drop in Homicides
Wilson's case is one of many still open even as Los Angeles has seen dramatic improvement in solving violent crime. LAPD statistics released early this year show the department achieved a 68 percent clearance rate for 2025 homicides and solved an additional 78 cold cases from previous years, amid a 19 percent citywide drop in homicides to levels not seen since 1966. State justice records published this July showed California's overall homicide rate fell to 3.5 per 100,000 residents in 2025 — the lowest statewide rate since record-keeping began in 1966 — according to CalMatters, with clearance rates for violent crimes improving as well.
Those trends offer little comfort to a case now nine years cold, but they underscore why detectives keep pressing for tips even on cases that have gone quiet for years. Nellie Knight and Wilson's family are still searching for the person responsible, and they say a single new lead — someone willing to identify who was riding in that white car — could still be enough to break the case open.
