WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. — A teen is accused of walking up to a home and shooting and killing a 74-year-old man.
The 17-year-old suspect in that Whitehall Township shooting is being charged as an adult with criminal homicide. He appeared before a judge on Friday afternoon.
During that court hearing, a detective said there is no known motive. The victim’s son tells 69 News the shooting appeared to be a random attack.
Neighbors say the area of Third Street in Whitehall Township is normally a calm and quiet area. So when neighbor, Rachael Humanick, heard the gunshots, she tells 69 News she ran outside. And that’s when she says she found the victim, on the porch of her neighbor’s house, and called 911.
“He was pronounced dead at the scene,” Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin Holihan said.
Officials found 74-year-old Fernando Guerrero Tabera on his son’s patio Thursday night after 5 p.m., with gunshot wounds to his torso, leg and chin, according to court papers.
17-year-old Elijah Ceballos is charged in his death with felony counts of Criminal Homicide and Firearms Not to be Carried Without a License and two misdemeanor charges.
“He’s a neighbor of the victim in this case, although it’s unclear at this point whether they knew each other,” Holihan said.
The victim’s son tells 69 News that to his knowledge, they didn’t even know the suspect, though he lives down the street.
Officials say they identified the suspect as Ceballos after Ceballos’s father walked the suspect over to a detective on scene.
“Ceballos’s father was a witness who came forward and helped the police actually identify his son as potentially involved in the situation,” Holihan said.
Ceballos’s dad allowed authorities to search the family’s home. Investigators found a gun matching the one in the shooting, and clothing similar to what was seen on surveillance footage.
“The clothing that we believe the shooter wore was recovered as well from the Ceballos home,” Holihan said.
The suspect’s brother says Ceballos had been acting strange recently and may have been using drugs.
On the day of the shooting, he told detectives his brother had been talking randomly, praying and not making sense.
Then he heard the gunshots — and found the suspect with a gun and a ski mask. As he took the gun away from Ceballos, he said the gun was completely empty.
As Ceballos’s brother called their father to tell him what happened, he says the suspect took off all his clothes in their living room. That’s where police later found the clothes and matched them to what they saw on the surveillance footage.
69 News reporter Kevin Zipay spoke with neighbors about what happened on Thursday night, and many say this type of violence is something they’ve never seen in their neighborhood.
Harry Keefer has lived along 3rd Street in Whitehall for years.
“I lived here about 40 years, 1987,” Keefer said.
Keefer says the neighborhood has always been a quiet place to live.
“People have changed around the neighborhood. A lot of new people come in. Whatever. We’re the old people here,” he said.
The suspect appeared in front of a judge Friday afternoon. The judge determined he’ll stay in jail rather than be transferred a juvenile detention facility.
Ceballos is being held at the Lehigh County Jail without bail.