A 14-year-old Lawndale boy is missing after he was last seen just after 1 a.m. Tuesday near Grevillea Avenue and Marine Avenue, prompting the California Highway Patrol to issue an Endangered Missing Advisory on behalf of investigators. Liam Luna is described as 5 feet 7 inches tall and about 190 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, and he was last seen wearing blue jeans and possibly carrying a green backpack. He is believed to be on foot, and anyone who spots him is asked to call 9-1-1 immediately.
The advisory was activated by CHP on behalf of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, according to a bulletin shared by CHP - Alerts, the agency's account for disseminating active alert flyers. The bulletin lists Luna as an at-risk missing person and notes he was last seen at approximately 1:20 a.m. Tuesday in Lawndale. Under California Government Code Section 8594.11 — enacted through Assembly Bill 946 and in effect since January 1, 2024 — local agencies can request this kind of statewide advisory through CHP when a missing person is determined to be at risk, developmentally disabled, cognitively impaired, abducted, or otherwise unable to care for themselves, according to LegiScan's record of the bill.
To trigger that kind of advisory, local law enforcement must certify that all available local search resources have already been used and that the disappearance happened under unexplainable or suspicious circumstances, per the same legislative record. It remains unclear what specific circumstances led investigators to classify Luna as at risk, whether he has any medical conditions, or whether foul play is suspected — details that have not been made public as of Tuesday morning. This is an active search request, not a concluded investigation.
Why LASD, Not a Local Police Force, Is Running the Search
Lawndale does not have its own municipal police department. Instead, the city contracts with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's South Los Angeles Station for law enforcement services and maintains a local Sheriff's Service Center on Prairie Avenue, according to the City of Lawndale. That arrangement is why sheriff's detectives, rather than a city police force, are leading the search for Luna and coordinating directly with CHP on the advisory.
The South Los Angeles Station itself, located on West Imperial Highway, opened in 2010 to replace the older Lennox Station that had served the area since 1948. The station covers Lawndale along with several unincorporated communities, including Athens, Del Aire, El Camino Village, Lennox, and Wiseburn, per the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's own station history.
A Familiar Street for Recent Searches
Grevillea Avenue has come up before in Lawndale missing-person cases in recent months. Sheriff's detectives appealed for public help in August after 15-year-old Jayden Castro went missing, last seen on the same residential corridor, as Hoodline reported at the time. Earlier in the year, South Los Angeles Station detectives also sought help locating 15-year-old Victoria Belle Rosendo, who ran from her home on 173rd Street in Lawndale and was classified as an at-risk juvenile, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department appeal in May.
Lawndale has seen a string of other juvenile search alerts over the past several months, from a statewide Ebony Alert for 15-year-old Kelsey Walker to an overnight search for 16-year-old Arely Rucuch. None of those prior cases are known to be connected to Luna's disappearance, and each was handled as a separate investigation.
How the State's Alert System Works
California's Department of Justice tracks an average of roughly 20,000 active missing person cases at any given time statewide through its Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit, and more than 3,200 people are reported missing annually across the state, with juvenile runaways and at-risk minors making up a significant share of active multi-agency search alerts, according to research from the NFound Samaritan Project. For missing minors specifically, the state also operates a 24-hour Missing Children Clearinghouse hotline at 1-800-222-FIND, run by the Department of Justice to receive tips and coordinate cases across agencies.
California separately created the nation's first Ebony Alert system in 2024, a specialized framework under Government Code Section 8594.14 aimed at missing Black youth and young women ages 12 to 25, distinct from the Endangered Missing Advisory used in Luna's case. The tiered systems reflect how the state calibrates its notification tools to the specific statutory criteria and demographics involved in each disappearance.
Anyone who sees Liam Luna is urged to call 9-1-1 right away. The search remains active, and no additional details about his disappearance have been released.
