LAPD search Beverly Hills high-rise apartment tied to triple slaying in Benedict Canyon

Los Angeles police detectives on Wednesday served a search warrant at a Beverly Hills apartment they say is connected to a triple slaying outside a Benedict Canyon home earlier this year.

In the most major development since the Jan. 28 attack that left three dead and four others wounded in an upscale hillside neighborhood on the Westside, LAPD detectives with the Robbery-Homicide Division gathered potential evidence inside the Beverly Hills high-rise Wednesday morning, police said.

Sgt. Bruce Borihanh said the warrant was served on an apartment at 8601 Wilshire Blvd. as part of a search for evidence related to the shooting that killed three women, including an aspiring rapper, who were sitting inside a rented Porsche SUV, and left four others critically wounded.

Borihanh said at the time of the shooting the women were killed at a “short-term rental home” in the 2700 block of Ellison Drive, a street of large hillside homes north of Beverly Hills.

Neighbors reported seeing several cars driving away from the scene within minutes of gunfire that rang out shortly before 3 a.m., police said.

Borihanh said a blue Tesla with front-end damage was seen entering the Beverly Hills apartment complex after the shooting. A warrant for the apartment was obtained after it was connected to the Tesla, he said.

“We are narrowing the focus of the investigation,” LAPD Capt. Jonathan Tippet said after the warrant was served.

Investigators with LAPD raid jackets were visible at the scene. An unmarked LAPD detective car and a white van were parked outside during the search.

The Benedict Canyon attack wasn’t random; it targeted members of the women’s group, Tippet previously told The Times. Detectives have been scouring security cameras in the neighborhood and interviewing survivors of the shooting, and they’ve developed some strong leads, officials said.

Those who were killed — Nenah Davis, 29, of Bolingbrook, Ill.; Destiny Sims, 26, of Buckeye, Ariz.; and Iyana Hutton, 33, of Chicago — all had roots in the Chicago area, police said. The lifelong friends died in a hail of gunfire that peppered their rental car.

Hutton was trying to get into the music business before she was killed, and was said by a friend to be in L.A. for a music album release. Davis, one of Hutton’s best friends, was a mom who once worked as a nurse. Sims was a mother of three and a hairstylist who grew up in Illinois before moving west with her family.

Earlier that night the trio had visited a bowling alley before returning to their rental home, according to friends interviewed by The Times.

Artist Mick E. Finnz, a longtime friend of Hutton’s, wondered whether something happened at the bowling alley to set off the deadly events that night. But Tippet said detectives had found no evidence of any altercation.