Criminal Justice

Costas Alesta's motion to withdraw his guilty plea filed was denied by county judge Judge Samuel P. Murray in a one-page order filed Friday, Nov. 7, county District Attorney Stephen G. Baratta said.

Ti'Shaun Singleton was pronounced dead early Saturday evening, according to the Lehigh County Coroner's Office. The coroner ruled homicide as the manner of death.

LehighValleyNews.com, lehighvalleylive.com and The Morning Call have filed a joint motion seeking the release of sealed court records connected to a grand jury drug case investigation. The documents have been sealed for two months even though an order sealing at least one of them expired more than a month ago.

An attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press argued that a motion to unseal court dockets tied to a drug bust should be allowed to continue in Lehigh County Court. LehighValleyNews.com, lehighvalleylive.com and the Morning Call have joined in the effort to make the records public.

Brenda Rodriguez, 52, of Palmerton, is the final of three defendants to be sentenced in the Dec. 7, 2024, shooting death of her husband, Hector Garcia Gomez, in the parking lot of Loco Hot Deals, 1155 MacArthur Road.

Eric Dowdle led Lehigh County’s prosecution against two former Allentown vice officers before state attorneys took over those cases.

More than three dozen law enforcement professionals from the Lehigh Valley and beyond took part in the first training at the newly opened Joni Berner Esq ‘75-Expert Witness Training Center & Crime Scene Laboratory.

Two men are in Northampton County Prison after a traffic stop and vehicle search yielded the seizure of about 20,000 fentanyl pills.

Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin P. Holihan announced Thursday that an Allentown man charged in a fatal shooting outside a child's birthday party last year has been sentenced. He will serve 11 ½ to 28 years in state prison in the death of an Alburtis man.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has filed an emergency motion in Lehigh County Court requesting that a judge unseal documents in at least 22 criminal cases tied to an interstate drug ring. Among the defendants is Lehigh County Commissioner Zach Cole-Borghi.

A man whose body was found in a field near Salisbury Elementary School on Friday morning has been identified.

ICE has confirmed the arrest of a suspected murderer from Honduras, Yobani Bonilla-Bonilla, aka, Gilberto Perez-Alvarado, in Easton in June 2025.

Police are investigating after a 37-year-old man was found dead on the 1400 block of Gaskill Avenue in Salisbury Township.

Sammy Sasso, a former Nazareth Area High School state wrestling champion, is charged with possessing unlicensed guns and a controlled substance after police said they stopped the car he was driving because of an expired registration.

Witness said Jose Vladimir Jerez, 24, of Allentown, was driving erratically while trying to pass another car when he crashed his car into a utility pole in October. A 20-year-old passenger, Ezequiel Hernandez-Cartagena, died less than 90 minutes later.

A former Easton Area High School resource officer who pleaded guilty to sending a sexually explicit image of himself to a 16-year-old female student in 2024 was sentenced to 9-to-24 months in Northampton County Prison, it was announced on Wednesday.

Said Bethlehem Police Chief Michelle Kott, “It’s not used for enforcement. It’s just a means, similar to the news media, of being able to bring up that camera and check the traffic conditions, or if there's an accident, it could be utilized for investigative purposes.”

Angel Martinez-Velez, 25, of Allentown, was shot and killed June 1, 2024, on the basketball court at Allentown's Fountain Park.

Allentown police were called just before 2 a.m. Sunday to a home in the 100 block of Pine Street, where officers found a girl suffering from a gunshot wound to the face, according to the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office.

Police were called to a South Side neighborhood just before 11:30 p.m. on Saturday for a report of a shooting. All of the wounded are expected to survive, police said.

John Gehrmann, stepfather of Palmer teen Enci "Aubrey" Wu, has been charged with illegally recording phone conversations with authorities and other individuals while he was looking into the girl's disappearance.

Mayor Matt Tuerk called on the county's president judge to “issue a public and unambiguous policy” banning ICE agents from county courthouses, a move he said would “be a major step in restoring trust in government and faith in its fairness.”