My Ngo was 82 years old when she died on Sunday, June 15, 2003, in Baldwin Park, a city in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died of stab wounds at 14012 Ohio St. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded her death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described her as "a 82-year-old Asian female" who "died Sunday, June 15, after being stabbed in Baldwin Park." The entry gave a street address on Ohio Street, but it did not say whether she lived there or whether that was simply where she was found. No follow-up story about her death appears to have been published.
Beyond her name, her age and the place where she died, almost nothing about My Ngo 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. She surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who she was, but none of that has entered the public record. Her name is short and shared by many people, and searches for it are crowded with unrelated results. Among them is a California court case about a man named My Ngo, a gang member convicted years ago of a murder for hire, who has no connection to this death. Other results point to dentists, doctors and obituaries of women with the same name in other states.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether she was stabbed during a fight or a robbery, attacked by a stranger or by someone she knew, or hurt indoors or on the street. It does not say what time of day she was hurt, whether she died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
At 82, she would have been a mother, a grandmother or an elder to someone, though nothing in the record says who her family was or how long she had lived in the area.
Baldwin Park is a working-class city of roughly 75,000 people. Much of it is made up of modest single-family homes on quiet residential streets, with commercial strips along its main boulevards. It is perhaps best known nationally as the home of the first In-N-Out Burger, which opened there in 1948.
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 My Ngo could be found in news archives or public records. More than 22 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew an 82-year-old woman named My Ngo in Baldwin Park, or who lived on or near Ohio Street in June 2003, may hold information that could help. Relatives, neighbors or people who helped care for her may remember who visited her home in those days. 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 (8477).
