A man was arrested early Saturday morning after officers responding to reports of an assault with a deadly weapon found evidence that a shooting had occurred in the 1700 block of Arlington Street near Santa Fe Avenue in West Long Beach. No one was injured in the incident, which took place around 3:15 a.m., and police say the suspect and the victim were known to each other.
According to MyNewsLA.com, officers dispatched to the assault-with-a-deadly-weapon call located evidence at the scene confirming a shooting had occurred, per the Long Beach Police Department. The male adult suspect was taken into custody and booked at the Long Beach City Jail, per a police statement cited by the outlet. Investigators say the case remains ongoing, and the outlet did not report the suspect's name, the exact charges filed, bail information, or what led to the confrontation.
A Corridor With a Violent Past
The stretch of Santa Fe Avenue near Arlington Street sits within the LBPD's West Patrol Division, which runs out of a substation at 1835 Santa Fe Avenue and serves roughly 100,000 residents while fielding more than 40,000 dispatches a year, according to the City of Long Beach. The same intersection has a grim history: in 2009, a gang-related shooting there left 19-year-old Frank Castro Jr. dead and two others wounded, a case that eventually led to 27 search warrants and 11 gang-related arrests in 2012, as documented by the Long Beach Post.
Two blocks away, on the 1900 block of Santa Fe Avenue, Long Beach police arrested 27-year-old Cesar Dominguez Santos in October 2024 after a shooting inside a business, booking him on attempted murder and weapons charges, Hoodline's earlier reporting on the corridor found. Together, the incidents underscore a stretch of West Long Beach that has repeatedly drawn police response over recent years.
Citywide Numbers Show a Different Trend
Despite the corridor's history, Saturday's non-injury shooting arrives amid a broader decline in gun violence across Long Beach. Police Chief Wally Hebeish reported in July 2025 that citywide shooting incidents had dropped 29% during the first half of that year compared to the same period in 2024, hitting a five-year low of 133 incidents, according to the Long Beach Post. Officers also seized 585 illegal firearms during that same span, an increase of 119 weapons over the prior year, a jump the department credits partly to its High Crime Focus Team.
The city recorded 31 homicides in 2025, down from 38 the year before, with five of last year's killings occurring in West Long Beach, per the Beachcomber. Gunshots accounted for 21 of those 31 homicides citywide. Aggravated assaults also ticked down slightly in 2025, falling 1% to 2,086 incidents, while simple assaults dropped nearly 9% to 4,584, according to the Long Beach Watchdog.
Potential Charges and Public Resources
Depending on what prosecutors ultimately file, the suspect could face charges under California Penal Code Section 245(a)(2), assault with a firearm, a wobbler offense punishable as a felony by two, three, or four years in state prison, or as a misdemeanor with a mandatory minimum six months in county jail, according to Eisner Gorin LLP. Physical contact or injury is not required for that charge. Alternatively, prosecutors could pursue Penal Code Section 246.3, willfully discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner, which carries up to three years in state prison as a felony or up to one year in county jail and fines as high as $1,000 as a misdemeanor, per Jones Trial Attorneys. It remains unclear which statute, if either, will apply in this case.
Residents looking to track crime trends in their neighborhood can consult the LBPD's interactive Crime Dashboard, launched in December 2025, which offers daily-updated incident data built on federal NIBRS reporting standards, according to the City of Long Beach. The Long Beach Police Department's investigation into Saturday's shooting remains open, and no further details have been released about a motive or the relationship between the two men beyond the fact that they knew each other.
