Clay Joe Pinto was 51 years old when he died on Tuesday, December 22, 2020, in Lomita. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after being stabbed near 1737 W. 247th Place. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described him only as "a 51-year-old white male" who "died Tuesday, Dec. 22, after being stabbed near 1737 W. 247th Place in Lomita." He died three days before Christmas, in the final days of a year shaped by the coronavirus pandemic.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Clay Joe Pinto 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.
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.
His name is an uncommon one. A people-search listing connects a Clay Joe Pinto to an address in Lomita, which may suggest he had lived in the city, but such listings are not reliable and say nothing about who he was. Other search results for the name concern different people entirely, none of whom can be connected to this death.
Lomita is one of the smaller cities in Los Angeles County, covering only about two square miles in the South Bay, between Torrance, Rolling Hills Estates and the Harbor City neighborhood of Los Angeles. It calls itself the "Hub of the Harbor" and is known for its quiet residential streets of modest homes and apartment buildings and for the Lomita Railroad Museum. Like many small cities in the county, Lomita does not have its own police force and contracts with the Sheriff's Department, which patrols the city from its Lomita Station. Killings there are investigated by the department's Homicide Bureau. On a short residential street like West 247th Place, neighbors often know one another, and someone may have seen or heard something in the days before Christmas that year.
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 Clay Joe Pinto could be found in news archives or public records. More than five years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on or near West 247th Place in Lomita in December 2020, or who knew Clay Pinto and spent time with him in the days before his death, may hold information that could help. 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 Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
