Most parents have stood at a corner or crossing and felt that quiet, crawling unease, the sense that the road is moving too fast, that drivers are not paying attention, that something bad is waiting to happen. Most people file that feeling away and move on. Joseph Brandlin did not. The 44-year-old single father from El Segundo, California, spent his own money, drove to a hardware store, and went out in the middle of the night to try to make the intersection near his children’s park safer with his own two hands. For his trouble, he was arrested at 1:30 in the morning, charged with felony offenses, and spent a night in jail. As reported, he has since collected 74 letters of community support and told anyone who will listen that he would do it all over again.
Brandlin has lived in the South Bay area of California for decades, and by his account, the intersection of Loma Vista Street and Acacia Avenue had been a problem for a long time. The crossing sits near a busy park that children use every day and currently operates as a two-way stop. Brandlin told the Los Angeles Times that he had witnessed multiple near-collisions at the spot, several of them involving kids. One of those close calls involved his own son, who was riding a bike and nearly got hit because a driver’s view was obstructed. The city knew about the concerns. The calls had been made. And yet the intersection remained exactly as it was, unchanged and, in Brandlin’s view, dangerous.
A Dad Who Decided to Stop Waiting
When official channels failed to produce results, Brandlin decided to act. He spent $1,000 of his own money purchasing 30-inch high-intensity stop signs and the stencils needed to paint large STOP markings on the road surface, each letter approximately eight feet long. His plan was straightforward: convert the two-way stop into a four-way stop and make the intersection safer for the families and children who used it every day. He did not wait for a permit. He did not wait for a meeting. He went out before dawn on March 14, 2026, and got to work.
Police found him at 1:30 in the morning, mid-task, while he was working on the second direction of traffic. He was arrested on the spot. The charges that followed were not minor: interfering with a traffic control device, vandalism, and grand theft, the last charge stemming from construction cones he had taken from a nearby worksite to use during the installation. Brandlin called the response “excessive,” a reaction that is hard to argue with when a father spending his own savings to repaint a road ends up in handcuffs. He spent that night in Hawthorne jail and has a court date scheduled for June.
The Neighborhood Agreed With Him
What happened after the arrest said something about how the community felt. Rather than distance himself from the situation, Brandlin gathered 74 letters from neighbors and brought them to the El Segundo City Council as evidence that his concern was not his alone. The people who lived near that intersection, the parents, the nannies, the residents who walked those streets every day, shared his assessment of the danger. Amanda Pruett, a local nanny and parent, told the Los Angeles Times that she believed it was “a huge issue” and that the safety of the children in the area was not something the city should be taking lightly. She had seen the unsafe driving herself and agreed that additional stop signs would help.
City officials, for their part, had not responded to Brandlin’s concerns by the time the story broke. The 74 letters had been submitted. The arrest had been made. The intersection remained a two-way stop.
“I’m Not Gonna Wait for Somebody to Die”
The detail that has resonated most with people who have followed this story is not the arrest or the charges. It is what Brandlin said afterward. When asked whether he regretted what he did or would approach things differently, his answer was immediate. He told CBS LA that he would do it again if that is what it takes, and added plainly that he was not willing to wait for someone to be killed before something changed. It is the kind of statement that is difficult to frame as reckless when the person making it spent a thousand dollars of his own money and lost a night of sleep trying to protect children who were not even all his own.
There is a question buried in this story that the city of El Segundo has not yet answered publicly: what would it have taken for the intersection to get the attention Brandlin believed it needed? He had raised concerns. His neighbors had raised concerns. A child on a bike had nearly been hit. And the response, until a father showed up with stop signs and a stencil kit, was nothing. Brandlin’s court date is in June. Whether he is convicted or not, the intersection at Loma Vista Street and Acacia Avenue is now a story that a city council cannot easily forget.
More from Decluttering Mom:
