Los Angeles authorities have ordered the county medical examiner not to release information about the death of a teenage girl whose body was discovered in the trunk of a Tesla registered to singer d4vd, officials said Monday.
Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found dead on Sept. 8 inside an impounded Tesla in Los Angeles, shortly after her 15th birthday. Multiple outlets have reported that the car is registered to 20-year-old musician David Anthony Burke, known professionally as d4vd.
According to a statement from the medical examiner’s office, a court order initiated by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has placed a “security hold” on the case. The order, issued Friday, prohibits the release or online posting of “any records or details associated with the case, including the cause and manner of death and Medical Examiner report,” until further notice.
The order followed local TV reports that police consider the Houston-born alt-pop artist a suspect, citing unnamed sources. The LAPD has not officially confirmed that, and d4vd’s attorney, Blair Berk, did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
LAPD Capt. Mike Bland said the security hold is meant to protect the investigation, not to limit public transparency. Detectives from the Robbery-Homicide Division are leading the probe.
“It was done so that our investigators get the information before the media and the public,” Bland said.
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Odey Ukpo noted that such court-ordered security holds are “virtually unheard of in other counties” in California.
“We are dedicated to serving our community with full transparency; however, the law precludes us from doing so while the court order remains in this case,” Ukpo said.
In an earlier statement issued in September, the medical examiner’s office said Rivas Hernandez’s body “was found severely decomposed” and that she had likely been “deceased inside the vehicle for an extended period of time before being found.”
Rivas Hernandez was last seen in April 2024 in Lake Elsinore, the community where she grew up, located about 60 miles (95 kilometers) southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
D4vd rose to prominence with a genre-blending sound that mixes indie rock, R&B, and lo-fi pop. He broke out on TikTok in 2022 with “Romantic Homicide,” which reached No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. He later signed with Darkroom and Interscope Records and released his debut EP, Petals to Thorns, followed by The Lost Petals in 2023.
Earlier this year, he embarked on a tour in support of his first full-length album, Withered, released in April. The final two North American dates, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, were canceled, as were a scheduled appearance at Los Angeles’ Grammy Museum and a European tour that was set to begin in Norway on Oct. 1.
