Jose Covarrubias was 48 years old when he died on Saturday, Jan. 7, 2006. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Long Beach Police Department case.
The Homicide Report lists him as a Latino man. It gives no street address, no neighborhood and no description of the circumstances. Because the case belongs to the Long Beach Police Department, he was most likely hurt somewhere within the city of Long Beach, but the record does not say where.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Jose Covarrubias 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. Jose Covarrubias is a common name in Southern California and across the country, and searches for it lead to many other men, none of whom appear to be this man.
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.
Long Beach is the second-largest city in Los Angeles County, a port city of more than 450,000 people on San Pedro Bay at the county's southern edge. It has its own police department, separate from the Los Angeles Police Department and the Sheriff's Department, and its detectives handle killings that happen inside the city limits. The city is known for the Port of Long Beach, one of the busiest container ports in the country, for the Queen Mary docked in its harbor, and for neighborhoods that range from beachfront communities to dense working-class districts in its central, western and northern parts.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest.
At 48, Jose Covarrubias would have had a long life behind him, with family, friends, coworkers and neighbors who knew him. Those people would remember the winter of 2006 and the news that he had died. Some of them may know where he was in his final days and who he had been with.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Jose Covarrubias 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 knew a 48-year-old man named Jose Covarrubias in Long Beach in January 2006, or who remembers hearing about a man beaten or fatally injured in the city that month, may have 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 contact the Long Beach Police Department's Homicide Detail at 562-570-7244, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
