Corey Lee Mosby was 32 years old when he died on Friday, Feb. 22, 2002. He died after being stabbed, and his death is listed in the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report as a homicide. The case belongs to the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Division, which covers downtown Los Angeles and the neighborhoods immediately around it.
The Homicide Report recorded his death in a single short sentence. It described him as "a 32-year-old black male" who "died Friday, Feb. 22, after being stabbed." Unlike most entries in the report, it gave no street address, no intersection and no neighborhood, so even the place where he was hurt is not part of the public record. The assignment to Central Division suggests he was hurt in or near downtown, but that is only an inference. No follow-up story about his death appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Corey Lee Mosby 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. Mosby is not a rare surname, and searches for Corey Mosby turn up an inmate list in Arizona, a memorial page for a younger man who died in 2001 and relatives named in obituaries in Pennsylvania and Texas. None of them can be connected to the man who died in Los Angeles in 2002.
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.
At 32 he was a grown man in the prime of his life. Nothing in the record says whether he had a wife or children, what kind of work he did, whether he lived downtown or was only passing through, or whether relatives in the city or elsewhere were ever told how he died.
Downtown Los Angeles is the historic and governmental center of the city, home to City Hall, the county courthouses, the old theater district along Broadway and the office towers of Bunker Hill. Within a few blocks of those buildings lies Skid Row, with its shelters, missions and single-room-occupancy hotels.
Homicides in Los Angeles rose sharply in the early 2000s, climbing past 600 in 2002, and detectives carried heavy caseloads. Many killings from those years were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Corey Lee Mosby could be found in news archives or public records. More than 23 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 32-year-old man named Corey Lee Mosby in downtown Los Angeles, or who heard about a stabbing there in late February 2002, 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).
