A 22-year-old Long Beach man has been charged with manslaughter and fleeing the scene of a crash after allegedly killing a 49-year-old woman in West Long Beach three months ago.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege that Gustavo Sandoval was driving a white Toyota Tacoma pickup truck westbound on Ninth Avenue when he hit Heaven Hooper, who was walking outside of a crosswalk at about 3:55 a.m. on March 29, 2026, near Fashion Avenue.<\/p>\n
The location is blocks away from the Long Beach Multi-Service Center, the primary intake facility for people experiencing or at-risk of homelessness.<\/p>\n
Hooper, who was homeless at the time, according to the Medical Examiner\u2019s office, was taken to a hospital, where she died.<\/p>\n
Hooper was \u201ca loving mother\u201d to seven adult children and \u201ca devoted grandmother\u201d to eight grandchildren, Freddy Hooper wrote on an online fundraiser<\/a> to cover her funeral costs.<\/p>\n \u201cHer warmth and dedication to her family touched everyone who knew her,\u201d Freddy Hooper wrote.<\/p>\n Sandoval was arrested early Sunday morning in Long Beach, roughly three weeks after a judge granted a warrant for his arrest, according to jail and court records.<\/p>\n Police did not disclose what led them to identify Sandoval as the driver.<\/p>\n On Monday in Long Beach Superior Court, Sandoval pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of hit-and-run resulting in death and a misdemeanor charge of vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence.<\/p>\n He was being held on $20,000 bail after a judge reduced it from the initial amount of $50,000.<\/p>\n If convicted, he could face up to 4 years and 11 months in jail, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n Long Beach has seen a rash of deadly crashes in recent years.<\/p>\n In 2025, the city recorded its deadliest year on the roadways<\/a> in more than a decade, leading neighbors, cycling advocates and even the City Council<\/a> to express frustration about lagging safety improvements.<\/p>\n More than half of the 53 fatal crashes last year involved pedestrians \u2014 resulting in 28 total deaths.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s total, 21 fatal crashes, is on pace to surpass 2025\u2019s. So far, 12 pedestrians have been killed by vehicles in the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 22-year-old Long Beach man has been charged with manslaughter and fleeing the scene of a crash after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-371208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371208","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=371208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}