A 74-year-old Long Beach man has been missing for two days, and police say he may be disoriented, has no cellphone, and could be anywhere within walking distance of where he vanished. Herbert Lee Brown was last seen around 7 p.m. Monday in the 1900 block of Locust Avenue, and investigators have released no information about where he might have gone.
Brown is described as a Black man standing 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighing about 211 pounds, with brown eyes and a bald head, according to KTLA. He was last seen wearing a turquoise Aeropostale shirt, black pajama pants, black Calvin Klein slides, and a blue-gray LA hat. He was traveling on foot and had no cellphone or other means of being tracked, and he has medical conditions that could put him at risk the longer he remains missing.
The Long Beach Police Department issued an at-risk missing person alert for Brown, and investigators say he may become disoriented. That designation matters under California law: Penal Code § 14215 addresses at-risk missing persons, according to Justia Law.
Why Police Moved So Fast
Under Penal Code § 14211, local law enforcement agencies statewide are required to accept missing person reports without delay and prioritize them over property crime investigations, according to FindLaw. For at-risk missing people specifically, agencies must electronically transmit the report to the California Department of Justice through the CLETS database within two hours of receiving it, per the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.
Beyond that database push, California also offers a Silver Alert system for elderly or cognitively impaired at-risk people. The California Highway Patrol provides information about the system's activation criteria.
A Race Against the Clock in a Familiar Corridor
The 1900 block of Locust Avenue is near Pacific Coast Highway, per the Long Beach Post. That location could work in searchers' favor.
Time is still a factor, and recovering wandering individuals promptly is important. Separately, wandering among people living with dementia or cognitive impairment underscores how common — and how urgent — cases like Brown's can be.
Recent Long Beach Cases Offer Some Hope
This isn't the first at-risk missing adult case Long Beach police have handled this year. In August, officers located a disoriented 49-year-old man in Norwalk after he had been missing more than two months from a Long Beach residential care facility. That earlier case, along with other recent searches for at-risk missing women in the city, shows how frequently disorientation-related disappearances arise — and how persistence can eventually pay off.
Anyone with information about Brown's whereabouts is asked to contact the LBPD Missing Persons Detail at 562-570-7246, or LBPD Dispatch at 562-435-6711. Anonymous tipsters can also reach L.A. Regional Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477.
