{"id":164677,"date":"2026-02-05T05:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T05:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/164677\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T05:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T05:07:10","slug":"long-beach-man-gets-15-years-for-killing-neighbor-he-claimed-tampered-with-his-food-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/164677\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach man gets 15 years for killing neighbor he claimed tampered with his food \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 65-year-old man has been sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison for fatally shooting his Long Beach neighbor, apparently under the belief\u00a0 the neighbor had been breaking into his apartment to tamper with his food<\/a>, according to court records.<\/p>\n

John Tolliver Higginbotham pleaded no contest to second-degree murder on Jan. 27 in the killing of Maxwell Fromm, 72, court records show. The two lived in an apartment complex in the 700 block of East First Street.<\/p>\n

\u00a0About 12:30 p.m.<\/a> on July 10, 2024, officers found Fromm dead inside his apartment.<\/p>\n

When Long Beach police detectives talked with Higginbotham in his apartment, according to court documents, he told officers, \u201cMy hands are up! It\u2019s right there,\u201d an apparent reference to a firearm sitting on furniture.<\/p>\n

That black 9 mm handgun was later determined to be a \u201cghost\u201d gun, or one that does not have a serial number.<\/p>\n

Higginbotham told detectives he believed the victim was poisoning his food and vandalizing his blue Honda Civic, detectives wrote in search warrant documents.<\/p>\n

Inside his apartment, detectives found a clear glass pipe with an off-white charred substance lining the inside and a clear plastic baggie containing a substance believed to be methamphetamine, detectives wrote.<\/p>\n

Higginbotham has remained in custody since his arrest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 65-year-old man has been sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison for fatally shooting his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,1312,723,138,131,133,132,137,100,136],"class_list":["post-164677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-california","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}