Ricky S. Howard was 59 years old when he died on Friday, July 23, 2021, in Vermont Square, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma near the intersection of South Vermont Avenue and 47th Street. His death was ruled a homicide and assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department's South Bureau homicide detectives.
Howard was a Black man nearing 60, old enough to have watched South Los Angeles change over several decades. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no news outlet reported on his death. The LAPD, which posts pages for many homicide victims asking the public for help, has no page for him that could be found, and no press release about the case was located.
The record places his death at a street corner on Vermont Avenue, one of the busiest north-south streets in South Los Angeles, rather than at a home. That suggests he may have been attacked in public, but the circumstances have never been described. It is not known whether there was a fight or a robbery, whether a weapon was used, whether he was struck by a vehicle, or whether anyone saw what happened. Nothing published says whether detectives identified a suspect, or even what time of day he was hurt.
Vermont Square is one of the older neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, a grid of modest single-family homes and small apartment buildings south of Exposition Park and the University of Southern California. The stretch of Vermont Avenue near 47th Street is lined with small businesses, churches, bus stops and auto shops, and it carries heavy traffic day and night. The area has long been home to Black and Latino working families, and it has also seen more than its share of the city's violence. In January 2021, police shot and killed a man in Vermont Square who they said was attacking his girlfriend with a knife, the Los Angeles Times reported, one of several violent incidents in the area that year.
The city of Los Angeles recorded 397 homicides in 2021, the most since 2006, according to the Los Angeles Times, and South Los Angeles accounted for a large share of them. Most were shootings. A 59-year-old man's death from blunt force injuries on a South Los Angeles street corner did not appear in news coverage at all, and without public attention, cases like his rely heavily on witnesses coming forward.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Ricky S. Howard could be found in news archives or public records. More than four years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. People who were near Vermont Avenue and 47th Street on July 23, 2021, or who knew him, may still hold information that matters. Anyone with information can call the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
