Maria Mercedes Cordova, a young woman from El Monte, died on Sunday, February 7, 2016, in Boyle Heights. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 1550 Pleasant Ave. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Hollenbeck Division case. The coroner's office gave her age as 18 when it identified her, although the Homicide Report entry lists her as 20 and an early police statement said 19.
Maria was riding with her boyfriend, 19-year-old Henry Sanchez, and his friend that Sunday. According to police, the three planned to pick up food at a popular local market and spend time at a park until they had to drop Maria off at work at about 4 p.m. A dark SUV roaming near the park made Sanchez's friend nervous, LAPD Det. David Alvarez told the Los Angeles Times, and they left in a white sedan, not knowing the SUV was following them.
At about 11 a.m., the sedan stopped at a red light at East Cesar Chavez Avenue and Echandia Street. The SUV pulled up alongside, and someone stepped out and fired at the driver's side. Sanchez was struck. His car sped down Echandia Street, hit a parked van and plowed into the porch of an unoccupied home on Pleasant Avenue. A neighbor, Juicho Ortiz, told The Times he "heard a woman screaming, 'Help, get me out! Get me out!'" Maria died at the scene. Sanchez died later at a hospital of gunshot wounds. The man in the back seat survived.
Detectives said Sanchez may have been mistaken for a rival gang member because of his age and appearance, but that none of the three had gang ties or police records. "They didn't know the area and they were in the wrong place at the wrong time," Alvarez said. "There were no words exchanged." Relatives told ABC7 that Maria was almost three months pregnant and that the couple were expecting a child. "My brother was with his girlfriend, he was excited, you know, that he was about to be a father," Jesse Sanchez said. A GoFundMe for the couple's funerals had raised only $160 in 18 hours, Fox News reported. Police described one attacker as a young Latino man between 5 feet 9 and 6 feet tall wearing dark clothing, and the second only as male.
Boyle Heights lies just east of downtown Los Angeles across the Los Angeles River. It is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods and a historic center of Mexican American life, known for Mariachi Plaza and for Cesar Chavez Avenue, its busy commercial street.
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.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Maria Mercedes Cordova 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. Someone who saw a black or dark SUV near Cesar Chavez Avenue and Echandia Street in Boyle Heights in February 2016, or who heard talk of the shooting afterward, may hold the detail detectives need. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a vehicle seen nearby or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. The LA Times listed Hollenbeck detectives at 342-8964. 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.
