Tekeisha Neely

Tekeisha Neely was 39 years old when she died on Sunday, July 1, 2012, in Long Beach. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died of stab wounds at 35 E. Plymouth St. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Long Beach Police Department case.

The coroner's records describe her as a Black woman, and police said she lived in Long Beach. Her death was reported in the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report by Matt Stevens, based on a statement from the Long Beach Police Department. Officers were called to an apartment complex in the 30 block of East Plymouth Street at about 1:10 p.m. that Sunday. They found that Tekeisha had been stabbed in the upper body during some kind of dispute "between unknown parties," according to the police statement. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Police were open about how little they knew. "A motive is unclear; however, detectives believe there are individuals who may have witnessed the incident or have information regarding what occurred," the department said. "Investigators are hopeful that someone will come forward and the investigation remains ongoing." The statement suggests that the stabbing happened in front of other people, in the middle of a Sunday afternoon at a place where people lived, yet no one had told police what they saw. The record does not say whether she lived in the complex, who else was involved in the dispute, or how many people were there.

The detectives assigned to the case were Mark McGuire and Greg Krabbe of the Long Beach Police Department's homicide detail. Beyond these details, almost nothing about Tekeisha's life has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and her name appears online mainly in lists of Long Beach homicide victims from 2012 and in public-records listings. She surely had family, friends and neighbors who remember who she was, but none of that has entered the public record.

Long Beach is the second-largest city in Los Angeles County, a port city of nearly half a million people on the coast south of Los Angeles. It runs its own police department, which investigates killings within the city limits. Its neighborhoods range from beachfront districts to dense blocks of apartments and modest single-family homes farther inland.

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 Tekeisha Neely could be found in news archives or public records. More than 13 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. The people who were at the apartment complex on East Plymouth Street on the afternoon of July 1, 2012, the ones police believed had seen what happened or knew about it, may hold the information that could finally answer what happened to her. 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.