Ramon Mercado was 56 years old when he died on Thursday, February 22, 2001, somewhere in Los Angeles County. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma. The public record does not give the address or the community where he was hurt. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 56-year-old Latino male" who "died Thursday, Feb. 22, after sustaining blunt force trauma." The entry named no street, neighborhood or city, and it did not say how he was hurt or whether detectives had identified anyone responsible. No news story about his death appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Ramon Mercado 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 common across the United States and Latin America, and searches for it returned hundreds of other men named Ramon Mercado, among them a college basketball player, a lawyer in Montana, several men named in unrelated criminal cases in other states, and people whose obituaries were published in New York, New Jersey, Florida and elsewhere. None of them can be tied to the 56-year-old man whose death was recorded by the coroner in February 2001.
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 Sheriff's Department investigates killings in the unincorporated communities of Los Angeles County and in the many cities that contract with it for police services, and its Homicide Bureau handles every such case. Because no address was released, it is not known which part of the county Ramon Mercado lived in or where he was hurt. At 56, he would have been born around 1944 or 1945. In an older man, an injury that a younger person might survive can prove fatal, and the coroner's finding of homicide means only that investigators concluded another person caused his 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 Ramon Mercado 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 knew a 56-year-old man named Ramon Mercado who died in February 2001, including relatives, neighbors, co-workers or friends, 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 contact 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.
