Paul Francis Machado was 53 years old when he died on Wednesday, November 25, 2020, the day before Thanksgiving. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died from blunt force trauma, and his death was eventually ruled a homicide. More than five years later, detectives have never been able to say for certain where he was attacked, why, or by whom.
Machado was a Latino man who had been experiencing homelessness, according to the Long Beach Police Department. On November 24, 2020, he told an acquaintance that he had been assaulted while staying at a homeless shelter "somewhere in Hollywood or the Hollywood area," police said. The next morning, at 3:49 a.m., the Long Beach Fire Department was called to a residence on the 1300 block of Alhambra Court in Long Beach's Cambodia Town, where paramedics picked him up and took him to a hospital. He died later that same day.
The coroner's report found that he died of internal bleeding caused by blunt force trauma to his abdomen, with a laceration of his spleen. It was more than a month before the Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide, and by the time Long Beach detectives began investigating in early 2021, the trail was already weeks old. When police first asked for the public's help, they released his last name as Camacho; it was later corrected to Machado.
In July 2021, Long Beach police said detectives had spent months trying to uncover the location of the assault, the motive, and who was responsible, and had turned up little. "Detectives welcome any information from the public which can help determine what may have happened and where," the department said. The case is unusual because the place where he was hurt may not be in Long Beach at all. An injury like his can take hours to become fatal, which leaves open the possibility that he was assaulted miles away, in Hollywood, before making his way to Long Beach.
Cambodia Town, centered on Anaheim Street in central Long Beach, is home to one of the largest Cambodian communities outside Southeast Asia. Hollywood, where Machado said the attack happened, had a large homeless population in 2020, along with shelters and encampments that grew during the pandemic. People living on the street are assaulted far more often than housed residents, and those attacks are often never reported. Homicides rose sharply across Los Angeles County in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, after years of relatively low numbers, and detectives were stretched across a growing caseload. Many of those killings were shootings that drew at least brief coverage on local television.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Paul Francis Machado could be found in news archives or public records. Someone who stayed at a shelter in the Hollywood area in late November 2020, or who knew Paul and saw him around the time he was hurt, may hold the key to this case. 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 contact the Long Beach Police Department's Homicide Detail at 562-570-7244, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS or through the P3 Tips app.
