Police Make Arrest in Downtown Garage Homicide Case

Published on August 02, 2024

Palo Alto, CA – Police arrested a suspect on Thursday in last week’s death of a 60-year-old man in a downtown parking garage.

On Thursday, July 25, 2024, at about 12:15 p.m., our 24-hour dispatch center received a call from a passerby reporting a person down on the first floor of the City Lot “S,” the parking garage located at 445 Bryant Street. Officers and personnel from the Palo Alto Fire Department responded immediately and located 60-year-old James Allen Rudolph, a member of the unhoused community, deceased.

Police treated the case as a suspicious death from the beginning, and an autopsy performed on July 26 by the Santa Clara County Office of the Medical Examiner-Coroner confirmed that Rudolph died by homicide via blunt force trauma to his head.

Over the course of the ensuing days, detectives conducted extensive follow-up investigation and were eventually able to identify a suspect in the case.  Detectives presented the case to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, and on the morning of August 1, obtained an arrest warrant signed by a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge for 34-year-old Alvaro Javier Lopez of Palo Alto for homicide.  On August 1 at about 10:51 a.m., officers arrested the suspect without incident inside City Lot “R,” the parking garage at 528 High Street.  Lopez is also a member of the unhoused community.  Police booked the suspect into the Santa Clara County Main Jail pursuant to the warrant.  His booking photo is available above.

Despite the arrest, the investigation into this homicide remains ongoing as detectives work through a significant amount of evidence. No further details are available for release at this time, including any speculation on a possible motive or the possibility that other suspects may have been involved.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call our 24-hour dispatch center at (650) 329-2413.  Anonymous tips can be e-mailed to paloalto@tipnow.org or sent via text message or voice mail to (650) 383-8984.