Adrian Jimenez was 23 years old when he died on Monday, July 24, 2000, in Long Beach. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at the rear of 2284 Long Beach Blvd. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Long Beach Police Department case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 23-year-old Latino male" who "died Monday, July 24, after being stabbed in Long Beach." The address in the record is marked "R/O," the shorthand used in police and coroner's reports for the rear of a property, which suggests that he was found behind a building on the boulevard rather than at its front. No other details were given, and no news story about his death appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Adrian Jimenez 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. Adrian Jimenez is a very common name, and searches for it are crowded with other men, including a college baseball pitcher, a political candidate in Florida, men arrested in Texas and Utah many years later, and an organ donor honored on a Rose Parade float. None of them can be connected to the young man who died in Long Beach in 2000.
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 Boulevard is one of the main north-south streets of Long Beach, the second-largest city in Los Angeles County. It runs from downtown and the waterfront north through the central part of the city toward North Long Beach, and for much of its length it carries the tracks of the Metro light rail line that links Long Beach with downtown Los Angeles. The blocks along it are lined with auto shops, small businesses, motels, apartment buildings and older homes, with residential streets on either side. The Long Beach Police Department, which handles homicides inside the city limits, has its own homicide detail.
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 Adrian Jimenez could be found in news archives or public records. More than 25 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was near the 2200 block of Long Beach Boulevard in late July 2000, or who knew a 23-year-old man named Adrian Jimenez in Long Beach at that time, 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).
