On the early evening of December 20, 2025, the sidewalks along Mills Avenue in the South Whittier area still had the ordinary rhythm of a weekend—cars gliding past, storefront lights coming on, people moving between restaurants and the nearby strip mall. Adrian Tadeo Coreno, a 19-year-old Hispanic man, was walking northbound with two younger companions when a vehicle rolled by and, in a sudden burst of violence, someone inside opened fire.
The shots came from the moving car, the kind of drive-by attack that leaves almost no time to react. Coreno was hit in the torso. Investigators said he tried to get away after he was struck, running from the immediate line of fire before collapsing near the Burrito Track restaurant area along the 10000 block of Mills Avenue. First responders arrived after the gunfire was reported at about 5:30 p.m., but the wound was fatal; he was pronounced dead at the scene. The two companions with him were not injured.
Detectives described the killing as possibly gang-related and treated it as a targeted homicide rather than a random act. The suspect vehicle was last seen continuing southbound on Mills Avenue as it fled the area, slipping into the traffic patterns of Whittier before anyone could stop it. No suspect names were released in the initial accounts, and authorities did not announce a detailed description of the vehicle beyond its direction of travel as the search began.
In the days after the shooting, the case settled into the tense, unresolved space that follows a public killing: investigators working leads, the community trading fragments of what they might have seen, and a family facing a sudden absence that can't be explained away. Relatives publicly pleaded for help, describing the death as a life stolen in a drive-by near Mills Avenue and urging anyone with information to call law enforcement tip lines and homicide detectives.
As of the most recent reporting, no arrests had been announced, and no one had been publicly identified as a suspect. The investigation remained open, with detectives continuing to seek witnesses, surveillance footage, and any clue that could turn a fleeing car into a name, a location, and eventually, a set of charges.
