Jesse Stiles, a 43-year-old male who was White/Caucasian, was shot late on the morning of June 14, 2025, near 17th Street and Santa Fe Avenue in West Long Beach. Officers responding around 11:30 a.m. found Jesse Stiles with a gunshot wound and rushed him to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead that day. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner determined the manner of death to be homicide, citing a gunshot wound of the abdomen.
Detectives quickly began piecing together what happened on that Saturday morning, canvassing the neighborhood and gathering witness statements and evidence from the street corner where the violence erupted. Within a day, investigators identified a suspect and moved beyond the uncertainty of those first hours.
On June 15, 2025, homicide detectives arrested Orlando Joel Villarreal, 41, of Long Beach, in the city of Carson. He was booked on suspicion of murder and held on $2,000,000 bail while detectives continued to investigate why the shooting occurred and whether there were any additional individuals involved. Authorities said the motive remained under investigation as they prepared the case for filing consideration by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
In the days that followed, officials publicly named Jesse Stiles as the victim, underscoring the stark facts of the case: a daytime shooting on a Westside block, a life ended at the hospital, and a community left to absorb another loss to gunfire. Memorial notices and community crime trackers recorded the date and place—June 14, 2025, in Long Beach—while pointing back to the police updates that charted the swift arrest.
As the investigation moved forward, the official account remained steady. Jesse Stiles had been found wounded on the street, transported by first responders, and later pronounced dead; the suspect, Orlando Joel Villarreal, had been located the next afternoon and taken into custody. With the motive still unclear, detectives continued to trace the moments leading up to the shooting, looking for context to explain the sudden violence that claimed the life of Jesse Stiles, 43.
