by Kevin Cody
“Eleanor, come out with your hands up. This has been going on long enough,” a police officer called out over a bullhorn in front of the home of Demetrius Doukoullos, 92, in the 500 block of The Strand, in Hermosa Beach.
The officer was a crisis negotiator with the Hawthorne/Hermosa Beach Police SWAT team. The SWAT team had been called to the Strand home, shortly after noon on Saturday, March 14, accompanied by the Hawthorne Police Department’s BearCat armored vehicle. Residents who saw the BearCat rumbling down Hermosa Avenue thought it was coming from that morning’s annual Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.
The crisis negotiators had been on the phone with Eleanor, who had barricaded herself inside Doukoullos’ home, on the bottom floor of the triplex, for almost seven hours. It was warm and sunny when the SWAT team arrived. Then a thick fog rolled in. It was almost 8 p.m. and dark when the crisis negotiators finally gave up talking to Eleanor by phone, and picked up their bull horn.
The crowd that had been gathering along the yellow perimeter tape could see officers with rifles on the balcony of the neighboring house to the north. The SWAT team had retrieved long metal rods known as breaching tools from their trucks parked along Hermosa Avenue.
The crisis negotiator called for Eleanor to come out over the bullhorn for a second, and what appeared to be a final time.
Eleanor came to the front door, with arms raised, wearing a black fedora, sunglasses and a loose fitting black suit.
The crisis negotiator calmly asked Eleanor to step into the front yard and turn around. She silently complied. Then half a dozen police officers cautiously approached her, cuffed her and walked her south on The Strand to one of the dozens of police vehicles called to the scene.
Following the arrest, Hermosa Police entered the house and found Doukoullos’ body.
“It began as a routine welfare check, and escalated to a suspected homicide,” Hermosa Beach Police Public Information Officer Sgt. Keagan Dadigan said on Monday.
Doukoullos leased the downstairs of the Strand triplex about a year ago, after selling his longtime Hermosa Strand home, according to Realtor Neil Chhabria, whose company manages the triplex.
“Despite his age, Demetrius was very active. He still drove. Prior to retiring, he built perhaps more homes on the Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach Strand than any other builder,” Chhabria said.
Chhabria’s father, Raju, who passed away last summer, sold many of the Strand homes Doukoullos built, including a home on the north end of the Hermosa Strand that sold in 2023 for $19 million, at the time, the most ever paid for a Hermosa home. Doukoullos also built The Strand “Rockstar House,” which Raju sold to billionaire Rockstar Energy Drink founder Russell Weiner for $21 million.
Neil Chhabria said the triplex’s upstairs tenant called him Saturday morning to report a foul smell coming from Doukoullos’ apartment, and that a suspicious person had been at the apartment. Chhabria knew Doukoulos to live alone.
After his calls to Doukoullos went unanswered, Chhabria said, he called the Hermosa police to request a welfare check. The officers’ knocks on Doukoullos’ door also went unanswered. Chhabria’s property manager brought a key. Inside the police found a middle aged person Dadigan described as belligerent and uncooperative and who indicated he had a gun. After he refused the officers order to step outside, the police called for the Hawthorne/Hermosa SWAT team.
Robert Simmons, 39, who identifies as a female, Eleanor Beaulieu, has been charged with homicide and is being held on $2 million bail.
Hermosa Police are asking anyone with information about Simmons to call the Hermosa Police at (310) 318-0360, or the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500. Or to remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at (213) 628- 2013. ER
He. Stop encouraging mental illness.