Edward Earl Jones was 46 years old when he died on Tuesday, May 16, 2006, in the Vermont Vista neighborhood of South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 544 101st St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Southeast Division case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It gave his age, listed him as a Black man, and placed his death in Vermont Vista. It did not say how he was hurt, who found him, whether the address was his home, or whether detectives had any idea who was responsible.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Edward Earl Jones 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 a very common one. Searches turned up many other men named Edward Earl Jones, including a man convicted of stabbing his wife in North Carolina, a shooting suspect in Portland, Oregon. None of them had anything to do with the death of the man who died in South Los Angeles in 2006.
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.
What the record does show is that he died at a specific address on a residential street, on a weekday in the middle of May. A man of 46 almost certainly had people who knew him well, whether relatives, friends, coworkers or the neighbors on his block.
Vermont Vista is a neighborhood in South Los Angeles, lying along Vermont Avenue south of Manchester Avenue. It is made up largely of small single-family houses and low apartment buildings on residential streets, and for decades it has been home to Black and Latino working families. West 101st Street is one of the numbered residential streets that cross the area. The neighborhood is patrolled by the LAPD's Southeast Division, which handled this case.
Los Angeles still recorded roughly 480 to 520 homicides a year in the mid-2000s, and many of those killings were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Edward Earl Jones could be found in news archives or public records. More than 19 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on or near the 500 block of West 101st Street in May 2006, or who knew a 46-year-old man named Edward Earl Jones, may hold information that could help. 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.
