Edwin Odell Moore was 59 years old when he died on Sunday, November 27, 2016, in downtown Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 545 South San Pedro Street. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case handled by the department's Central Division.
He was a Black man nearing 60, and he died the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Edwin Odell Moore has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no news outlet appears to have reported on the death. He surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record. His name is fairly common, and searches turned up only other men named Edwin Moore, among them a former Iowa Supreme Court justice.
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 in the record is a significant one. 545 South San Pedro Street is the address of the Union Rescue Mission, one of the oldest and largest homeless shelters in Los Angeles, in the heart of Skid Row. That does not mean he lived at the mission or was hurt inside it, and the record does not say. But it suggests that he may have been among the thousands of people who live, sleep or seek help in the blocks around it.
Skid Row covers roughly fifty blocks on the east side of downtown, between the Historic Core and the warehouses of the Arts District. For generations it has had the largest concentration of homeless people in the United States, with tents on the sidewalks and missions, shelters and clinics serving people with nowhere else to go. Many people who witness violence there have no fixed address or move on before detectives can find them.
By the mid-2010s Los Angeles was recording roughly 250 to 300 homicides a year, among the lowest totals in decades, yet many of those killings still went unsolved. The death of a 59-year-old man from blunt force injuries on San Pedro Street received only a brief entry in the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Edwin Odell Moore could be found in news archives or public records. More than nine years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was on San Pedro Street or around the Union Rescue Mission over Thanksgiving weekend in November 2016, or who knew Edwin, may hold information that could help detectives. Shelter staff and longtime residents may remember him by a nickname. 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.
