Joshua Maurice Mabry was 32 years old when he died on Friday, November 6, 2020, in Long Beach. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds near 340 W. Pacific Coast Hwy. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Long Beach Police Department case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described him only as "a 32-year-old Black male" who "died Friday, Nov. 6, after being stabbed near 340 W. Pacific Coast Hwy in Long Beach." No news story about the stabbing could be found, and the Long Beach Police Department does not appear to have released any public details.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Joshua Maurice Mabry 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.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether he was stabbed during a fight or a robbery, attacked by a stranger or by someone he knew, or hurt indoors or on the street. 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.
Joshua Mabry is not an especially common name, but searches still turn up several other men who share it: a medical researcher in Florida, an author of a technical paper on retail data, an official named in a letter to a church-state watchdog group, a figure in nineteenth-century Georgia land records and grandsons named in obituaries in several states. None of them can be connected to this death. His middle name, Maurice, did not lead to any record about him either.
Pacific Coast Highway is one of the main east-west routes through Long Beach, a busy commercial street lined with motels, gas stations, fast-food restaurants, auto shops, small markets and apartment buildings. Through central Long Beach the highway passes older, working-class neighborhoods north of downtown, where heavy traffic passes at all hours. A stabbing on or near such a busy road may have been seen by drivers, bus riders, store clerks or motel guests who never knew they had witnessed something important.
Long Beach is the second-largest city in Los Angeles County and has its own police department and homicide detectives, separate from the Sheriff's Department and the LAPD.
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 Joshua Maurice Mabry could be found in news archives or public records. More than five years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was on or near West Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach in early November 2020, or who knew a 32-year-old man named Joshua Mabry, 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 Long Beach Police Department's Homicide Detail at 562-570-7244, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
