Relatives gathered in Glendale on Monday to mourn an Armenian man who authorities say was fatally stabbed by a Beverly Hills teenager.
The body of 40-year-old Vanik Voskanyan rested in a powder-blue casket, topped with a large arrangement of white roses, as a clergyman joined grieving family members at Grand View Memorial Park in Glendale.
Beverly Hills resident Conoray Lawantara, a teenager, is accused of stabbing Voskanyan on Aug. 30 while the 40-year-old was searching through trash in an alley. Police arrived after a struggle and took the teen into custody.
Voskanyan was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Lawantara has maintained that he acted in self-defense.
During Lawantara’s arraignment, his attorney, Debra White, said Voskanyan grabbed for the teen’s neck and elbowed him. White also alleged that Voskanyan bit off part of Lawantara’s finger and that Lawantara sustained a stab wound to the abdomen during the confrontation.
Judge Keith Schwartz pushed back on that account, saying there was “no reason for the defendant to have contact” with the homeless man. “He didn’t approach, he wasn’t violent,” the judge said. “He was minding his own business.”
The defendant “stabbed him repeatedly, like in a horror movie,” Judge Schwartz said.
At the Glendale memorial, Voskanyan’s family said they want justice in the fatal stabbing case.
“I hope justice is served,” Voskanyan’s uncle, Armen Akopyan, told the Los Angeles Times. “Because [the suspect] took an innocent man’s life.”
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Akopyan said Voskanyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, and moved to Glendale in 2009. Before coming to the United States, he studied to become a dentist. After arriving in America, he worked in construction and jewelry and later as a dental technician.
A longtime friend disputed the characterization of Voskanyan as homeless.
“It is painful for his family and friends to see him reduced to a single description that does not tell the truth about the person he was,” Levon Grigoryan told the outlet.
“Vanik was much more than the circumstances of his death,” he said. “He was a son, a brother, a relative, a friend, and someone who was loved and remembered by many people.”
“It doesn’t matter how the guy was living at that moment. You don’t have to take a knife and kill somebody.”
More than 100 family members dressed in black attended his service at St. Leon Armenian Cathedral in Burbank before it moved to his burial in Glendale. The Catholic service was conducted in Armenian and was open-casket.
Lawantara spent some time in the hospital before being jailed and charged with murder. His bail was set at $2 million, and he has since posted bond. Lawantara, an Indonesian national, has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
It was revealed in court that Lawantara recently attended the posh Portsmouth Abbey boarding school in Rhode Island. He was listed as a 2025 graduate of the $80,000-a-year private Catholic school.
The alleged murderer is due back in court on Nov. 5 to set a date for a preliminary hearing.