Sienna Jackson / Roundup
Photographs line the walls of the Granada Hills home, of a young man with warm brown eyes and dark hair. It’s a warm Saturday afternoon. Beams of sunlight catch on the glass frames.
His bedroom is on the first floor, off the living room. It’s open and airy, with hardwood floors and a window that looks over the backyard. The bed is freshly made, clothes and other belongings tucked neatly away in the wall length closet.
The room is bright, warm, and lived in. But its former occupant, Mike Yepremyan, 19, has been dead for almost a year.
“He was a good man. Very calm, very nice boy, his first goal was to become an astronaut,” said Ani Atajyan, Yepremyan’s mother, seated on a sofa beside a photograph of her son. “He was very interested in the stars. He was always searching, searching, searching to know more, more, more. And he never gave me half his time,” she said, wringing her long, thin fingers.
His sister Christine, 6, nods, sat beside her mother clutching a Smurf plushy.
Gombert Yepremyan, known as Mike to friends and family, was killed Nov. 18 over a text message he had sent to his girlfriend Denielle Wegrzyn. He sent the text to Wegrzyn early in the evening to complain about her companion, now 21-year-old Kat Vardanian, who Yepremyan had disapproved of:
“Every time u hang out with that bitch u guys get hookah. Is there something cool bout her n hookah that u enjoy so much?” he text-ed Wegrzyn, according to the Los Angeles Times coverage of the hearing.
That text set off a chain of phone calls and text messages between Vardanian, her brother and cousin, and an unknown man, all culminating in a late-night confrontation in a Sears parking lot in North Hollywood that left Yepremyan dead, from a bullet to the brain.
The shooter, an unidentified man, and Vardanian’s cousin, 22-year oldVahagn Jurian, fled from the scene in a black BMW with no license plates later found abandoned by police.
So far, no one involved in the shooting has been convicted for Mike’s death. Vardanian, who was arrested and charged for murder nearly five months after the shooting, was dropped on murder charges during a preliminary hearing in April.
Anthony Brooklier, Vardanian’s attorney, would not return calls from a reporter. Her next hearing, on a lesser charge of conspiracy, will be in November, marking the first year anniversary of Mike’s death.
“I want her to go to jail. What else? She killed my son,” said Atajyan.
Meanwhile, Mike’s father, Art Yepremyan, has continued his own investigation into Mike’s murder with the help of a Beverly Hills private investigator, John J. Nazarian, who has been working pro bono for the Yepremyan family since last December.
“I feel like I’ve known this family for twenty years,” said Nazarian, sitting with the family in their backyard. “The only thing that Mr. and Mrs. Yepremyan did wrong was believe in the system,” he said.
Los Angeles police detectives in the North Hollywood division that handled the shooting did not return calls from a reporter.
Nazarian, a third-generation Armenian, believes that the shooter and Jurian returned to the United States after fleeing the country in the days after the shooting, and are now being hidden by ‘certain elements’ of the Armenian community in California.
“Everybody in the Armenian community view these guys, Mike’s killers, as gods,” he said. “The people who did this, they’re real animals. Barbarians.”
Beside him, Art nods, eyes cast down towards his shoes.
“I don’t believe they’re gonna help,” Art, a native Armenian, said of the local communities. “They’re not gonna help, and I won’t ask them for help,” he said.
The Yepremyan family moved from Armenia when Mike was 6, to search out a new life for their family. After working in various markets and shops in the Valley, Art found a steady career at a flooring company.
Occasionally, he accompanies Nazarian on his investigations, serving both as translator and mediator for Nazarian, who speaks no Armenian.
The lack of closure for the Yepremyan family has left them frozen in grief. In the months after his son’s death, Art’s hair has become greyer, and he’s lost weight.
On that morning in November, the last day that Art would ever see his son, he was sleeping in his bedroom. Art had peaked in to check on him before he left home for work. The last time they would ever speak would be by phone.
“He had been happy, laughing. He was really, really happy,” Art said, hands clenched. “He was a good boy, he never gave me any troubles.”
Atajyan’s eyes are red-rimmed. “Every single day when he came home from work, he hugged me and kissed me and said, did you miss me? And I said, I did, I did,” said Atajyan, voice breaking.
Atajyan and her husband received a call from a local hospital the morning after Mike’s death. They weren’t told over the phone that their son was dead.
“When they called me from the hospital, I don’t know… I just know one thing, I love him so much, I want him back,” she sobbed, putting her face in her hands. “I want them to answer for this, all of them, the girl, the cousin, the killer. All of them.”
Story facts:
Mike Yepremyan was killed in a parking lot at a North Hollywood Sears on Nov. 18, 2009.
So far, none of the people involved in the murder have gone to trial, and the shooter and getaway driver are currently in hiding.
Since then, his family has struggled to find an end to the pain that has enshrouded their lives. Mike’s mother still makes his bed and cleans his room.
His father has begun his own private investigation with the help of a private detective. His little sister sits quietly on the sofa.
Links:
Mike Yepremyan’s memorial website, maintained by his father: http://www.mikeyepremyan.com/
The original LA Times story:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/06/local/la-me-text-message-20100506
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Ani Atajyan displays a photograph of her son, Gombert Yepremyan. Yepremyan was fatally shot last year in a Sears parking lot. (Amber-Rose Kelly / Roundup)
