A man walked away unhurt after someone opened fire on him in Central Long Beach early Saturday, and about 75 minutes later, police had a suspect in custody and a gun in hand. The shooting unfolded around 3:15 a.m. in the 2300 block of East Pacific Coast Highway, just a block west of Junipero Avenue, following a verbal dispute between the two men.
According to MyNewsLA.com, the victim told officers he’d had a verbal dispute with 30-year-old Compton resident Jose Ramirez roughly 30 minutes before police arrived on scene. Police said Ramirez didn’t let it go — he left the area after the confrontation, then came back and opened fire at the victim, who was not hit.
Suspect Tracked Down About 75 Minutes Later
Ramirez reportedly fled in a white SUV, though that detail carries lower confidence in the reporting. What is firmly established is that officers caught up with him at approximately 4:30 a.m. near the intersection of West Anaheim Street and Magnolia Avenue. He was taken into custody there, and police said a firearm was recovered at the time of his arrest.
Ramirez was booked into the Long Beach Jail on charges of attempted murder and felony weapon possession. He was being held in lieu of $1 million bail as the investigation continued, per the same report. No motive beyond the initial dispute has been disclosed, and police have not released further details on the relationship between the two men.
Shooting Numbers Trending Down Citywide
The incident lands against a backdrop of improving — if uneven — gun violence statistics in Long Beach. The city logged 133 shootings in the first half of 2025, down from 188 during the same stretch the year before, according to the Long Beach Post. Murders fell nearly 28 percent over that period, from 18 to 13, and police seized 585 firearms in the first half of 2025, 119 more than the year prior.
Not every category moved in the right direction, though. The outlet also reported that overall violent crime was essentially flat, down just 0.1 percent through the end of June, with a 9.4 percent jump in aggravated assaults offsetting gains elsewhere. Saturday’s shooting, while it left no one physically harmed, fits into that more complicated middle category of violence that hasn’t budged as much as homicides and overall shooting counts.
Central Long Beach has seen other gunfire this year along the same PCH corridor, though that separate case remains unconnected to Saturday’s shooting. The Long Beach Post reported on a fatal shooting investigation near East Pacific Coast Highway and Locust Avenue in the Washington neighborhood, in which no suspect descriptions were immediately available. Early accounts in that case suggested three to four people were seen running from the scene, though police did not confirm that detail.
As of the initial report, the investigation into Saturday’s shooting remained ongoing, with no further updates on Ramirez’s custody status or any court proceedings.
