Last night, the echoes of gunfire added one more lament to Long Beach’s persistent trials with violence. According to a statement released by the Long Beach Police Department, at around 10:07 p.m. on August 10, officers rushed to the 700 block of 7th Street after reports of a shooting came in. They encountered a man, wounded but alive, the lead having somehow spared him the grim fate of eternity.
First responders from the Long Beach Fire Department hurried to the scene, confronting the human cost: a male adult victim with a gunshot wound that was, by some stroke of luck, not life-ending. They provided the immediate care needed and then moved him to the safety of a local hospital’s embrace. As for the perpetrator, as shadows offer refuge to the unknown, so too does the identity of the shooter remain hidden; the LBPD’s investigation is ongoing.
The weight of these events bears down on a community that knows the heavy tread of violence all too well. It disrupts the heartbeat of neighborhoods, pulses of fear where there should be peace. This latest incident is not an anomaly but a continuation of a narrative that Long Beach has been attempting to revise, with each shot fired being a setback in a city’s journey to tranquility…