Ramon Corona was 55 years old when he died on Sunday, January 17, 2021, in Echo Park, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, just northwest of downtown. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma near the intersection of Glendale Boulevard and Reservoir Street. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case.
Corona was a Latino man in his mid-50s. Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about him has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser that clearly refers to him could be found for this story; the name is shared by many people, and none of the notices found matched his age, date of death and neighborhood. No news outlet appears to have reported on his death, and no LAPD news release about it could be found.
Because so little has been released, the circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record places his death at a street intersection rather than at a home address, but it does not say whether he was attacked there, found there, or struck by a vehicle, all of which can lead to a finding of blunt force trauma. It does not say what time of day it happened, whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether police ever identified a suspect.
Glendale Boulevard is one of the main roads through Echo Park, carrying traffic between downtown Los Angeles, Silver Lake and Atwater Village. It is lined with apartment buildings, small businesses, bus stops and older homes on the hillside streets that climb away from it. Echo Park is known for its lake and park, for Dodger Stadium on its eastern edge, and for the rapid changes it went through in the 2010s, as new cafes and higher rents arrived in a neighborhood that had long been working class and largely Latino. In early 2021, homelessness in the area was a frequent subject of public debate, and encampments around Echo Park Lake were cleared by the city that March.
January 2021 was one of the darkest months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Los Angeles County, when hospitals were overwhelmed and many people stayed home. The city of Los Angeles went on to record 397 homicides in 2021, the most since 2006, according to the Los Angeles Times. Many of those killings were shootings that drew at least brief coverage on local television. The death of a 55-year-old man from blunt force injuries on an Echo Park street did not.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Ramon Corona 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. Someone who lives or works near Glendale Boulevard and Reservoir Street may remember a disturbance, a crash or a police response on that Sunday in January 2021, and anyone who knew him may hold information that could help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a vehicle seen nearby or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. 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.
