Carmen Patricia Soliz was 37 years old when she died on Friday, Dec. 10, 2004. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died after sustaining blunt force trauma. Her death was ruled a homicide. The public record does not give the address where she was hurt, and unlike most entries in the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report, hers does not name the law enforcement agency that handled the case.
The Times recorded her death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It gave her age, listed her as a Latina woman, and noted the cause of death. It did not name a city, a neighborhood or a street, did not say how she was hurt or who found her, and did not say whether investigators had any idea who was responsible. No follow-up story appears to have been published.
Beyond her name, her age and the place where she died, almost nothing about Carmen Patricia Soliz 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. She surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who she was, but none of that has entered the public record. Searches turned up only other women named Carmen Soliz, none of them connected to her death, and the surname is common enough in Mexican American families that she is hard to trace without more details.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether she 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 she was hurt, whether she died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
The lack of an agency and an address makes this one of the thinnest entries in the record. It means the public does not even know which department is responsible for the case, whether it was a city police department, such as the LAPD, or the Sheriff's Department, which covers the unincorporated parts of the county and many smaller cities.
Even so, a 37-year-old woman was almost certainly known to someone, whether a relative, a coworker or a neighbor who noticed when she was gone.
Los Angeles County is home to roughly 10 million people in 88 cities and many unincorporated communities. Without an address or agency, it is impossible to say which of these places was connected to her death.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Carmen Patricia Soliz could be found in news archives or public records. More than 21 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 37-year-old woman named Carmen Patricia Soliz, or who remembers a woman by that name who disappeared from their lives in December 2004, 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 the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
