Raymond Gonzales was 43 years old when he died on Thursday, July 27, 2006, in Rosemead, in the San Gabriel Valley east of downtown Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds in front of 2507 Angelus Ave. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded only that Gonzales, "a 43-year-old Latino male," died "after being stabbed in Rosemead," according to the coroner's records. The location was given as in front of a house number on Angelus Avenue, which suggests he was attacked outdoors on a residential street, although the record does not say whether he lived there, was visiting, or was simply passing by.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Raymond Gonzales 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.
Raymond Gonzales is one of the most common names among Latino men in the Southwest, and that makes his death especially hard to trace. Searches for the name turn up real estate agents, people convicted of crimes in Texas, Nebraska and elsewhere, and dozens of obituaries for men who died in other places and other years. None of them can be tied to the man who died on Angelus Avenue in 2006, and none of them were used for this story.
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.
Rosemead is a small city of single-family homes, apartment complexes and busy commercial boulevards. Like several neighboring cities in the San Gabriel Valley, it contracts with the Sheriff's Department for law enforcement rather than running its own police force, so homicides there are handled by the department's Homicide Bureau. Angelus Avenue is a residential street, the kind of place where neighbors may have been home on a summer day and may have heard or seen something.
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 Raymond Gonzales could be found in news archives or public records. More than 19 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on or near Angelus Avenue in Rosemead in July 2006, or who knew a 43-year-old man named Raymond Gonzales who died there, 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 Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
