Jay Patrick Maynor was 51 years old when he died on Wednesday, May 2, 2018, in the Vermont Square neighborhood of South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 606 W. Vernon Ave. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department South Bureau Homicide case.
The coroner's records describe him as a white man in his early 50s. No news story appears to have been written about his death.
An obituary for a Jay P. Maynor, born in 1966, was published through the Ramona Sentinel in San Diego County and handled by a mortuary in Poway. It records that he died in 2018 in Los Angeles. His birth year, his middle initial and the place of his death all match the man in the coroner's records, which suggests that his family was in the Poway or Ramona area of San Diego County and brought him home for his funeral.
His name has caused confusion online. A different man named Jay Maynor, from Alabama, made national news in 2014 and 2016 after he pleaded guilty to killing the man who had molested his daughter years earlier. That man was in his early 40s and in prison in Alabama. He has no connection to Jay Patrick Maynor of Los Angeles.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether he was beaten in a fight, attacked by a stranger, assaulted indoors or on the street, 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 he was hurt, whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect. The address on West Vernon Avenue is a street address rather than a highway or a park, which suggests that he may have been hurt at or near a home or a business, but the records do not say which.
Vermont Square is a residential neighborhood in South Los Angeles, made up mostly of single-family homes and small apartment buildings on a grid of tree-lined streets, with commercial strips along Vermont Avenue and other major roads. The neighborhood takes its name from the Vermont Square Branch Library, one of the oldest branch libraries in the Los Angeles Public Library system. Vernon Avenue is one of its main east-west streets.
Los Angeles recorded about 260 homicides a year in 2018 and 2019, among the lowest yearly totals in more than half a century, yet many of those killings still went unsolved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Jay Patrick Maynor could be found in news archives or public records. More than seven years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew him, who saw him in the days before May 2, 2018, or who was near the 600 block of West Vernon Avenue that day may hold information that could help detectives. 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.
