Aubrey Ray Childress was 59 years old when he died on Friday, May 19, 2000, in the Green Meadows neighborhood of South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 827 E. 93rd St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case handled by the department's Southeast Division.
He was a Black man nearing 60. Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Aubrey Childress has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no news story about his death appears to have been published. He surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record. Searches for his name turned up only other men named Aubrey Childress in other states.
His name does appear once in the newspaper. In January 2001, the Los Angeles Times published an article titled "Our Town," which included a numbered list of people killed during the previous year. Entry number 22 reads simply "Aubrey Childress, male, black, 59." The list gave no details about how or why he died. Being remembered only as a line in a long list says a great deal about how little attention his death received.
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 a residential street address on East 93rd Street, which may mean he was hurt in or near a home there, but it does not say whether he lived at that address.
Green Meadows is a South Los Angeles neighborhood of small single-family houses, duplexes and apartment buildings, laid out on a grid of numbered streets not far from Watts. It is part of the area patrolled by the LAPD's Southeast Division, which for decades has been one of the busiest homicide divisions in the city. On blocks like East 93rd Street neighbors have often known one another for years, and a man in his late 50s would very likely have been a familiar face to the people living around him.
Homicides in Los Angeles rose sharply in the early 2000s, climbing past 600 in 2002, and detectives carried heavy caseloads. Many killings from those years were never solved. The killing of a 59-year-old man on a residential street in Green Meadows does not appear to have been reported as a news story.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Aubrey Ray Childress could be found in news archives or public records. More than 25 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on or near East 93rd Street in May 2000, or who knew him, 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 call the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
