Update: April 15 8:58 p.m. Headline changed to “stabbed to death” from “attacked” for clarity.

Hanging out with some friends at his home in South L.A., on the 800 block of 101st Street, an El Camino student was fatally attacked, his mother said.

Tommy Cheatham Jr. was an 18-year-old music major at El Camino College and had been attending since last year, his mother, Christine Marie Chavez, said.

Oriana Chavez, who is also a theater student at El Camino and Cheatham’s older sister, was the one who found his body.

“It happened before I got here,” she said. “I hope they find the guy who did this.”

Christine Chavez had an idea about who the attacker could have been.

“There was this new guy who hung around Tommy recently,” Christine Chavez said. “After the night Tommy died, he never came back since.”

Christine Chavez said that the new guy was a Spanish speaker, which was weird because “none of Tommy’s friends spoke Spanish.”

She also felt that he was acting “suspicious” on that night. He was giving directions over the phone, in Spanish, to another person, while Cheatham and his friends were playing guitar.

“Like he was describing our house, like he was getting picked up and he said, ‘Century’ which is right where we live,” Christine Chavez said. “But he didn’t get a ride.”

LAPD Media Relations Officer Drake Madison said that there was no case file popping up during an interview. He added that the division in which the case is being handled would need to be contacted for any further information.

“I’m telling you now though, if it’s an ongoing homicide,” Madison said. “They most likely will not give you anything.”

Several calls were made to the southeast division, which would be the handling division, but no calls were returned.

The day after the stabbing, it rained and washed all the blood away.

“God didn’t want me to see it anymore,” Christine Chavez said.