Police in Long Beach say residents can expect to see increased traffic enforcement as the city experiences a rise in deadly crashes.<\/p>\n
“This is a significant situation,” Long Beach Police Chief Wally Hebeish said. “When we see an increase in traffic fatalities; when we see people losing their lives in traffic collisions, it’s devastating,” Hebeish said.<\/p>\n
The police chief said there were 56 traffic fatalities in the city last year. As of April this year, there have been 22 fatalities so far.<\/p>\n
“I’ve seen children that have died behind unfortunate tragedies with vehicle collisions, and it’s heartbreaking,” Hebeish said.<\/p>\n
The renewed focus on enforcement follows several recent deadly incidents. On March 2, 2026, a three-year-old girl was killed when a driver, for some reason, backed up, jumped a curb and struck three people who were sitting on front steps. A month earlier, 54-year-old Lori Ann Carreon was killed while riding her bike.<\/p>\n
“It’s just a huge tragedy that we lost Lori Ann,” said Christianne Zah-Webber of Long Beach.<\/p>\n
Zah-Webber said additional safety measures are needed in the area.<\/p>\n
“It would be great if we had a traffic light here,” she said.<\/p>\n
Another resident, Edward Andrew Boswell, described concerns about the same location.<\/p>\n
“This particular intersection is simply an accident waiting to happen,” Boswell said.<\/p>\n
In addition to increased enforcement, Boswell said he would like to see speed bumps installed. He recalled a past crash he described as severe.<\/p>\n
“I remember a very terrible accident with someone in a rental Mustang blasting through at 90 miles an hour, and they totaled out the car and it was like an explosion,” Boswell said.<\/p>\n
Hebeish said preventing deaths requires awareness from everyone on the road.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes we forget that vehicles are extremely dangerous, and our bodies are not meant to collide with a vehicle. So paying attention to that; being aware of that,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If the pedestrian is aware of their surroundings, and the person behind the wheel is aware of where they’re driving, I think that can make us all safer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police in Long Beach say residents can expect to see increased traffic enforcement as the city experiences a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[122403,44154,122402,131,133,132,122404,16217,122401],"class_list":["post-285614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-christianne-zah-webber","tag-deadly-crashes","tag-edward-andrew-boswell","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-lori-ann","tag-traffic-fatalities","tag-wally-hebeish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285614","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=285614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}