Norman Teranz Howard was 46 years old when he died on Saturday, January 12, 2002, in the Mid-City area of Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 2117 S. Spaulding Ave. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Wilshire Division case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 46-year-old black male" who "died Saturday, Jan. 12, after being stabbed in Mid-City." The entry gave a residential street address, but it did not say whether he lived there, whether he was attacked there or whether that was simply the place where he was found. 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 Norman Teranz Howard 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. His middle name, Teranz, is unusual, but searches for his full name return nothing about him. Searches for Norman Howard instead turn up a novelist named Howard Norman, a former Dodgers first baseman whose given names were Norman Howard, and many older men in obituaries from Montana to Tennessee. None of them can be connected to the man who died on Spaulding Avenue.
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.
Mid-City is a large, mostly residential district in the central part of Los Angeles, southwest of downtown. Its streets are lined with older single-family homes, duplexes and small apartment buildings, many of them built in the 1920s and 1930s, and the area has long been home to Black, Latino and other working and middle-class families. It is patrolled by the LAPD's Wilshire Division.
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 Norman Teranz Howard 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 lived on or near the 2100 block of South Spaulding Avenue in January 2002, or who knew a 46-year-old man named Norman Howard in Mid-City, 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).
