By KEVIN SITES

Jill Leovy's war isn't thousands of miles away. In fact, without traffic, she can drive from her office to the front lines in about ten minutes.

It's being fought mostly in the tough, minority neighborhoods of Los Angeles County, where three people are killed each day on average — more than a thousand a year.

Leovy is the creator of The Homicide Report, a blogging project by the Los Angeles Times in which she is attempting to record every homicide in Los Angeles County over the course of a year. She has covered over 700 to date.

Because it is often the only public acknowledgement of the event, the blog has become a memorial for murder victims, with family members and friends posting responses adjacent to many of the entries, providing updates on children or expressing the pain of being left alone.

Most of the reports are just a sentence or two long, but they are filled with heartbreak, like the death of Michael Presley, 19, buried in the same grave as his father, who was also murdered years earlier.

Or the story of twin brothers Noel and Joel Velazco, both shot to death only a few feet from each other, but six years apart.

http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/49321/th...

The Homicide Report: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/homicidere... /

I've known Jill since college. She's an amazing person.