The founder of a charity working for social justice change was shot dead in his Los Angeles home Monday night during a home invasion, according to police.
LAPD officers responded to a shooting call around 6 p.m. at a home in the 900 block of Alandele Avenue in the Wilshire area. They found 33-year-old Michael Latt suffering from a gunshot wound. Paramedics took Latt to the hospital where he died.
Police said Latt had been shot by an intruder, later identified as Jameelah Elena Michl, who remained on the scene. Michl, 36, is facing a murder charge and is at the Los Angeles County Jail on a $3 million bond.
Cops say she lived in her car, which has been taken in for processing.
The shooting left neighbors stunned.
“I’m heartbroken, I’m shocked,” Avarie Shevin, Latt’s next-door neighbor, told CBS affiliate KTLA. “I was looking out my window and saw a female standing in the walkway with her hands up and they took her into custody.”
Shevin described Latt as a “super sweet guy” who lived in the home with his girlfriend along with their dog and cat.
“I can’t wrap my brain around what could’ve happened that caused him to be shot and killed. I keep picturing his face and I cannot believe he has passed,” she said.
Michael Latt, inset, was shot and killed at his Los Angeles home by an intruder on Monday night, according to police. Jameelah Elena Michl is facing a murder charge, cops say. (Inset: Michael Latt Instagram; Scene: KTLA/YouTube)
Latt founded the charity Lead With Love which “harnesses the power of art to spark change, bring love, hope and healing to communities and empower others,” its Instagram page says. The charity helped organize events such as the 2017 “Hope & Redemption Tour” where the rapper Common performed concerts for inmates at more than 10 California prisons. From 2016-2020, Latt helped organize the MLK Now events on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Harlem’s Riverside Church that featured speakers such as Lupita Nyong’o, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael B. Jordan.
Latt talked about the importance of the prison tour in a 2019 interview with Forbes.
“Storytelling is imperative to creating lasting meaningful reform. Through stories and art, we can showcase incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women’s humanity, shine a light on injustices in the system and shift the narrative about how we talk about the issues,” Latt told the publication. “In order to change public policy, we have to change public perception.”
According to the article, he also worked on the marketing team that promoted the 2013 movie Fruitvale Station starring Jordan as Oscar Grant III, the Black man who was killed in 2009 on a subway platform in Oakland, California.
“Working on Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station opened my eyes up to how prevalent and insidious white supremacy is in our country and also showed me the potent power of storytelling to change hearts and minds,” Latt told Forbes.
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