Harold Lawrence Collings was 58 years old when he died on Tuesday, November 13, 2001, in Downey. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 12532 Lakewood Boulevard. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Downey Police Department case.
He was a white man in his late 50s. Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Harold Lawrence Collings 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 full name is an uncommon one, but searches for it turned up only other men named Harold Collings, most of them in Indiana, Georgia and South Carolina, whose obituaries have no connection to this case.
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. The record gives an address on Lakewood Boulevard, a major street, but it does not say whether that address was a home, a business or the place where he was found.
Downey is a city of about 110,000 people in southeast Los Angeles County, between the San Gabriel River and the Rio Hondo. For much of the 20th century it was a center of the aerospace industry. Engineers and workers at the North American Aviation plant there, later run by Rockwell, built parts of the Apollo spacecraft and the space shuttle, and the site is now home to the Columbia Memorial Space Center. The city is also known for the oldest operating McDonald's restaurant, on Lakewood Boulevard. Lakewood Boulevard is one of Downey's main north-south arteries, lined with shops, restaurants, offices and apartment buildings, and the city has its own police department.
Homicides in Downey are relatively uncommon, and the death of a man in his late 50s on one of the city's main streets would have been unusual there.
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 58-year-old man in Downey received only a brief entry in the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report, and no news story about him appears to have been published.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Harold Lawrence Collings could be found in news archives or public records. More than 24 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was near the 12500 block of Lakewood Boulevard in Downey in November 2001, or who knew Harold, may hold information that could help detectives. 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 Downey Police Department, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
