Gladis L. Monterrosa was 56 years old when she died on Friday, May 15, 2020, in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died after being stabbed. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's South Bureau Homicide unit.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described her only as "a 56-year-old Latino female" who "died Friday, May 15, after being stabbed." Unlike most entries in the database, hers gives no street address, intersection or neighborhood. The record does not explain why the location was left out. It may not have been released by the coroner or police, or it may simply have been missing from the records the Times received.
Beyond her name, her age and the place where she died, almost nothing about Gladis Monterrosa 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.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether she was stabbed during a fight or a robbery, attacked by a stranger or by someone she knew, or hurt indoors or on the street. 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.
Without a location, even the most basic question about her death, where it happened, cannot be answered from the public record. The listing of the case with the South Bureau Homicide unit is the only geographic clue, and it suggests the stabbing took place somewhere in the southern part of the city.
Searches for her name turn up only unrelated people with similar names, in public lists and social media comments, none of whom can be connected to this death.
The LAPD's South Bureau oversees policing across South Los Angeles and the harbor area, a large part of the city that includes long-established working-class neighborhoods of single-family homes and apartment buildings, busy commercial boulevards, churches and parks. Many families there have lived in the same neighborhoods for decades, and news of a woman's violent death would likely have spread among neighbors, coworkers and congregations, even if it never reached a newspaper.
Los Angeles recorded about 260 homicides a year in 2018 and 2019, among the lowest yearly totals in more than half a century, yet many of those killings still went unsolved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Gladis L. Monterrosa 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 knew a 56-year-old woman named Gladis Monterrosa in South Los Angeles or the harbor area in May 2020, or who heard of a woman being stabbed there that month, 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 leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
