Medical examiner rules Celeste Rivas Hernandez death a homicide in D4vd case

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner said Celeste Rivas Hernandez died of “multiple penetrating injuries caused by object(s),” and ruled her death a homicide, bringing the county’s long-sealed findings into the open and sharpening the stakes in the D4vd case.

The release, issued Wednesday, April 22, 2026, ended months of secrecy around details that Los Angeles police had sought to keep out of public view while investigators built their case. That decision reflected a familiar law enforcement tradeoff in a high-profile homicide: hold back the medical examiner’s findings to protect the investigation, or disclose enough to explain why a case is being treated as murder. In this instance, the delay kept the public from knowing the cause and manner of death even as the broader investigation continued to expand.

The autopsy lands two days after D4vd, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke, was charged Monday, April 20, 2026, with first-degree murder in connection with the death of the 14-year-old girl. Burke, who is 21, pleaded not guilty at his first court appearance that same day. Prosecutors have tied the case to a timeline that stretches back to Celeste’s reported disappearance in April 2024, with a last confirmed contact with her family in May 2024, and an allegation that she visited Burke’s Hollywood Hills home on April 23, 2025, before she was never heard from again.

Authorities identified Celeste’s remains in September 2025 after they were found inside a Tesla registered to Burke. Local reports said the body was discovered on September 8, 2025, in the front trunk of the vehicle after it had been towed from Hollywood Hills. Police sources later treated the case as a murder investigation, but the sealed medical examiner file left the public without the forensic conclusion that now underpins the homicide ruling.

Celeste Rivas Hernandez’s family spoke publicly this week after the charges, thanking the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and asking for justice. The case has drawn unusual scrutiny because it combines a child disappearance, a celebrity suspect and a span of roughly 18 months between the girl’s reported disappearance and the homicide finding now made public. The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner, which handles more than 13,000 medicolegal death investigations each year, rarely draws this level of attention, but this case has turned every withheld detail into part of the story.