David Lee Chow was 50 years old when he died on Monday, Dec. 10, 2001. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Long Beach Police Department case. The public record does not give the address or even the neighborhood where he was hurt.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in one of its shortest entries. It described him only as "a 50-year-old male" who "died Monday, Dec. 10, after being stabbed." Unlike most entries from that year, it gave no race, no street and no community. The agency listed suggests that he died within the city of Long Beach.
A genealogy listing on the AncientFaces website records a David Chow who was born on Jan. 18, 1951, and died on Dec. 10, 2001, at the age of 50.
The date and the age match the coroner's record exactly, which suggests that the listing may refer to the same man, although it does not say where he lived or how he died.
Beyond that, almost nothing about David Lee Chow 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. Chow is a common surname, and searches for his name are crowded with other men named David Chow, among them a martial arts adviser to a 1970s television series, a researcher at a Torrance medical institute and men whose obituaries were published in Illinois, Hawaii and several Southern California cities. None of them can be connected to the man who died in Long Beach in 2001.
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.
Long Beach is the second-largest city in Los Angeles County, a port city of more than 400,000 people on the southern edge of the county. It is home to one of the busiest container ports in the country, to the retired ocean liner Queen Mary and to California State University, Long Beach. The Long Beach Police Department, not the Los Angeles Police Department, investigates killings within the city limits.
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 David Lee Chow could be found in news archives or public records. More than 24 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 50-year-old man named David Lee Chow in Long Beach, or who remembers a stabbing in the city in the second week of December 2001, 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 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 (8477).
