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Officers responded to the area of Redondo Avenue and Spring Street, just south of the airport, at about 8 a.m. regarding a shooting. There, they located a man with minor injuries, LBPD spokeswoman Allison Gallagher said.
According to Gallagher, the road rage started as the vehicles were traveling eastbound on Spring Street. It’s unclear what started the conflict.
Police believe the incident prompted the suspect to fire a gun in the direction of the other vehicle. The gunfire did not strike the victim, but he was left with minor injuries from the glass shattered by the bullets, the LBPD said.
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The department first responded to a trash fire next to a church in the 1200 block of Redondo Avenue at about 7:20 p.m., according to LBFD spokesman Brian Fisk.
Fisk said the fire was knocked down quickly, and afterward, crews saw a column of smoke rising to the west. They responded to another blaze about a half mile west of the first at about 8:30 p.m.
The second blaze was in a carport adjacent to a body shop in the 1300 block of Stanley Avenue. Fisk said five or six vehicles “went off like a bomb” and were fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived. That fire was extinguished as well, Fisk said, and no injuries were reported at either scene.
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These shootings come as Long Beach police say they’ve seen an alarming rise in gun violence. On Tuesday night, for instance, police rushed to four separate reports of gunfire throughout the city.
As of now, police don’t believe the two most recent shootings are related, spokeswoman Allison Gallagher said.
In the first shooting, a man was driving in the area of Pacific Coast Highway and Obispo Avenue when someone shot at him from a gray sedan at about 10:55 p.m. and drove away, police said. The victim called authorities from the area of Redondo Avenue and Anaheim Street and paramedics took him to a local hospital with a non-life threatening gunshot wound to his upper body, Gallagher said. He was reportedly in stable condition.