A violent night in Allentown left two people dead — including a 1-year-old boy — and six others injured in three separate shootings late Friday night and early Saturday morning, police said.
Police do not believe the three incidents are related, and investigations are ongoing.
In addition to the child, a 44-year-old woman was shot and killed Friday night around 8:42 p.m. in a residence on the 100 block of Chestnut Street, according to Lehigh County Coroner Daniel Buglio and Allentown police. Buglio has ruled both deaths as homicides.
A 66-year-old man was also shot at the residence and is expected to survive, according to Allentown police. He was taken to a local hospital.
Police and Buglio said they are withholding the names of the victims to allow their families time to grieve.
Neighbors said the child was one of the couple’s grandchildren, who they watched at the Chestnut Street home.
“They were great people … loving, caring, would do anything to help out,” said one neighbor who declined to share their name. “I just don’t understand what happened.”
In addition to Allentown police and the coroner’s office, the Chestnut Street shooting is being investigated by the Lehigh County Homicide Task Force and the Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office, Buglio said.
Several blocks away, a second shooting was reported about 9:03 p.m. in the 300 block of Ridge Avenue. A man and a woman were shot. They were taken to local hospitals and are expected to survive.
Demitrius Bashir Campbell, a 23-year-old man from Allentown, has been charged in the Ridge Avenue shootings. Police said there is also a second, unidentified shooter. Campbell was charged with attempted homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, two counts of aggravated assault, recklessly endangering and carrying a firearm without a license.
On Saturday at 2:25 a.m., a man was shot in the 1600 block of Hanover Avenue and later found by police. He was taken to the hospital and is expected to survive. Two other men were shot in this incident and arrived at local hospitals on their own. They are expected to survive.
The shootings Friday capped off a deadly year for gun violence in Allentown. There were 16 homicides in Allentown as of October, the last one being 18-year-old Sian Cartagena, who was shot on Oct. 2 and died days later. This would be the 17th and 18th homicide of 2023, according to reporting by The Morning Call and statistics from the DA’s and coroner’s offices.
“We haven’t seen this type of violence in some time,” Jeani Garcia, operations director at Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley, an anti-violence nonprofit, said Saturday.
“The loss of life in the city of Allentown is tragic and weighs on all of us,” Mayor Matt Tuerk said. “When an infant is part of that, that’s particularly challenging for our community to handle.”
Tuerk said he is thinking about the victims’ family and the first responders who are traumatized by the violence they witness.
“Allentown is a resilient city, and I know we won’t let these tragedies define us,” state Rep. Joshua Siegel said in a Saturday statement. “I have endless faith in our community partners, our police department, and our stakeholders to work together to bring safety and security to every neighborhood and every block. I stand ready to support them in whatever way they need.”
Tuerk said homicides are on the rise, but said violent crimes overall have decreased in the city over the last year.
“Any number higher than zero is unacceptable to my mind,” he said. “We can’t as a community accept homicide and death like this, death of one person at the hands of another.”
Tuerk said APD confiscated more than 300 guns in 2023.
Garcia said community members are feeling rattled by the violence. Staff members from Promise Neighborhoods were out canvassing Friday night at two of the locations impacted by the shootings.
“This is really going to hit harder because of the death of a child and a woman,” she said. “This is something that’s definitely going to impact the entire city.”
Mercedes Roldan, a 28-year-old mother of two, lives nearby the home of the Chestnut Street shooting. She said she heard at least five gunshots Friday night when she was standing in her family’s kitchen.
“Allentown has just gotten a lot worse since when I was a kid,” she said. “I just try to stick to myself so something doesn’t happen to me or my kids.”
Multiple Chestnut Street neighbors said they thought the gunshots were firecrackers. One neighbor who has lived on the block since the 1990s said there were many drug dealers who lived in the area back then, but in recent years the neighborhood has been safe and occupied mainly by families.
On Ridge Avenue, one resident said they heard about 30 gunshots Friday night, and thought at first they were firecrackers.
“There’s a lot of people who come to our neighborhood, who shouldn’t be in our neighborhood and start problems,” the resident said. “They make our neighborhood look like a bunch of thugs, but we go to work everyday.”
The resident described the community as multiracial and full of working families.
“Everybody knows everybody. It’s all family.”
The person, who’s also an employee at the nearby Sportsmen’s Cafe, said the bar isn’t the cause of such violence and management has worked to remove that stigma in recent years as shootings have become more frequent.
From her experience working to combat violence in Allentown, Garcia said Promise Neighborhoods tries to mediate issues before they result in violence, she said, urging community members to reach out if they know “things are stirring” between individuals.
“The goal is to get neighbors and community members active in making their communities safer,” she said.
Tuerk said community engagement work is also a priority of the city’s police officers, but they face a “manpower issue.”
There will be about 215 officers on the Allentown police force to start 2024. The size of the police force has been trending upward since 2019, but an ideal number of officers is about 230, Tuerk said.
Garcia said community members are more likely to trust “credible messengers” than law enforcement and suggested a formal collaboration between Promise Neighborhoods and the city.
Tuerk said he is open to the idea and noted funding for such collaborations is helpful. He’s also interested in state and federal violence interruption programs Allentown may be able to participate in.
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