Gregorio Perez was 41 years old when he died on Thursday, July 10, 2008, in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds. The public record does not give the address where he was attacked or where he died. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Newton Division case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report, which drew on coroner's records, contains only one sentence about him. It said that "Gregorio Perez, a 41-year-old Latino male, died Thursday, July 10, after being stabbed." The entry did not name a street, a neighborhood or a time, and no follow-up entry appears to have been published. The assignment of the case to Newton Division detectives is the only clue to where in the city the stabbing happened.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Gregorio Perez 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. Because the entry does not say whether he was stabbed on July 10 or some days earlier, it is not even certain that the attack and the death happened on the same day.
Gregorio Perez is also a very common name. Searches turn up obituaries for many other men who shared it, in Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and elsewhere, as well as court records, news stories and social media pages about unrelated people. None of them can be connected to the man who died in Los Angeles in July 2008, and the shared name makes it harder for anyone searching today to find a trace of his life.
Newton Division is one of the Los Angeles Police Department's oldest patrol areas. It covers a part of South Los Angeles just south of downtown, a dense mix of older single-family homes, apartment buildings, small businesses and industrial blocks, crossed by busy corridors such as Central Avenue.
Homicides in Los Angeles fell steeply in the late 2000s and early 2010s, yet many killings from those years were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Gregorio Perez could be found in news archives or public records. More than 17 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 41-year-old man named Gregorio Perez in South Los Angeles in 2008, or who heard about a stabbing in the Newton area in early July 2008, 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 (877-LAPD-24-7), or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
