A body was discovered inside a tent at a homeless encampment near the Roscoe Boulevard off-ramp of the northbound San Diego (405) Freeway in the North Hills neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley. The discovery was reported at 5:15 p.m., and the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office was summoned to the scene, arriving at 6:26 p.m.
The discovery was reported to the California Highway Patrol, according to MyNewsLA.com, which first reported on the case. CHP Officer A. De Los Reyes told City News Service that the off-ramp was not shut down for the investigation, according to the same report. The California Highway Patrol holds primary law enforcement jurisdiction over state highways and adjacent Caltrans rights-of-way under California Vehicle Code Section 2400, which is why CHP rather than local police is handling the scene at this stretch of freeway.
A Freeway Corridor Under Growing State Scrutiny
The stretch of the 405 through North Hills has become a focal point of state and city efforts to clear encampments from freeway property. In July 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-1-24, directing Caltrans and CHP to prioritize dismantling homeless encampments on state rights-of-way following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. A statewide task force Newsom convened later led to Caltrans removing 81 encampments and more than 1,150 cubic yards of waste from state rights-of-way in Los Angeles during the 2024-25 fiscal year, according to the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom.
Locally, the encampment sits within Los Angeles City Council District 6, where the City Council in May expanded Municipal Code Section 41.18 anti-camping restrictions, creating 26 designated enforcement zones banning encampments near freeway underpasses, railways, and parks, per reporting from MyNewsLA.com. Mayor Karen Bass's Inside Safe initiative has also repeatedly conducted outreach and clearance operations along the 405 corridor in the San Fernando Valley in an effort to move unhoused residents into interim housing, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Rising Street Homelessness in the Valley
The area's history includes other emergency responses tied to the freeway-adjacent encampments; the Los Angeles Fire Department battled a major structure fire near the same 405 off-ramp sector back in September 2020. That history of hazards comes as unsheltered homelessness has been climbing in parts of the San Fernando Valley even as citywide numbers shift. Results from the 2026 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority in July found that total homelessness in the City of Los Angeles rose 3.4% to 45,194 people, with unsheltered homelessness outdoors growing 7.9%, according to the Beverly Press.
While unhoused populations declined in parts of the Westside and Hollywood, unsheltered growth in 2026 was concentrated in Downtown LA, South LA, and key sections of the San Fernando Valley, an area LAHSA designates as Service Planning Area 2 that includes North Hills, the Beverly Press reported.
Mortality Trends Complicate the Picture
The death comes against a backdrop of shifting countywide mortality data for unhoused residents. In March, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health released its annual homeless mortality report showing that 2,208 unhoused residents died in 2024, a 10% decrease in the mortality rate and the first recorded decline in homeless deaths in LA County since tracking began in 2014.
That same report, detailed by The Guardian, found that while drug overdoses among unhoused residents fell 21% in 2024, substance toxicity remained the leading cause of death, accounting for 40%, or 884 deaths, of unhoused fatalities. Traffic-related deaths among unhoused people, meanwhile, rose 25% that same year. No cause of death has been determined in the North Hills case, and it remains unclear whether outreach teams or Caltrans crews had recent contact with this particular encampment before the body was found.
