Chung Sin Kwon was 55 years old when he died on Sunday, June 7, 2009, in Los Angeles County. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma. His death was ruled a homicide. The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report, which drew on coroner's records, did not list an address, a neighborhood or an investigating agency for the case.
The Homicide Report gave only his name, his age, the date and the cause of death, and it described him as an Asian man of 55. Because no location or agency was recorded, it is not publicly known which police department or sheriff's station took the case, or even in which part of the county he was hurt.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Chung Sin Kwon 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. Searches for his name turned up only namesakes, among them medical researchers in Korea and the United States and a man with a similar name who died of natural causes in 2016. None of those pages concerns the man who died in June 2009.
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.
Los Angeles County covers more than 4,000 square miles and is home to about 10 million people, spread across 88 cities and many unincorporated communities, each with its own police department or sheriff's station. Without an address, it is not possible to say where Chung Sin Kwon lived or was hurt, or whether he lived in the county at all. Nothing in the record says where he was from, what he did for a living or whether he had family nearby.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest. The death of a 55-year-old man, recorded without even a location, is among the least documented entries in the Homicide Report.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Chung Sin Kwon could be found in news archives or public records. More than 16 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Relatives, friends, co-workers or neighbors who knew a 55-year-old man named Chung Sin Kwon in Los Angeles County in the spring of 2009, or who know how he was hurt in early June of that year, may hold information that could help investigators. 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 Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500 or the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247, which can route a tip to the agency handling the case, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
