ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The Lehigh County District Attorney has announced the sentence for an Allentown man charged in the death of a 3-year-old boy who grabbed a gun and shot himself in the chest in March 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jose Hilario Abreu of Allentown was sentenced Tuesday to serve 18 months to 60 months in state prison at a hearing before Judge Robert L. Steinberg, according to the DA’s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Officials say that Abreu pleaded guilty on Dec. 3, 2024, to involuntary manslaughter in which the victim was under 12 years of age and endangering the welfare of a child, both felonies of the second degree.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On March 28. 2024, just before 12:00 p.m., Lehigh County 911 Communications Center received a 911 call in which a woman said her 3-year-old son had grabbed a gun and shot himself in the chest, authorities say.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The victim, Elijah Abreu Borgen, was found with life-threatening injuries and taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital Cedar Crest, but later died from his injuries at the hospital, according to the press release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elijah Abreau Borgen died from a gunshot wound to the torso and his death was ruled accidental by the Lehigh County Coroner, officials say.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The investigation revealed that Jose Hilario Abreu had a loaded handgun in the home with Elijah and a second child, who was a 2-year-old, the press release says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Investigators found that the Glock-19 semi-automatic handgun was left unattended and fully loaded with a live cartridge in the chamber by Jose Hilario Abreu, according to the release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Evidence further revealed when the gun was shot, it was unholstered and sitting on top of a pillow of the couch where both toddlers were sitting, officials say.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Officials say that a rapid gunshot residue test was performed on Elijah after his death and yielded a presumptive positive indication for gunshot residue on his hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The case was investigated by Allentown Police detectives Joseph Beiner and Harold Bonser as well as the Lehigh County Homicide Task Force, the Lehigh County Coroner’s Office, and the Lehigh County Firearm and Toolmark Laboratory, according to the press release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania State Police assisted in the arrest of Abreu.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The Lehigh County District Attorney has announced the sentence for an Allentown man charged in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,715,6561,8266,6328,8264,433,1024,1816,957,28,1224,8265,8267],"class_list":["post-10203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-police","tag-culture-of-allentown","tag-elijah-abreau-borgen","tag-glock","tag-jose-hilario-abreu","tag-lehigh-county","tag-lehigh-county-coroner","tag-lehigh-county-district-attorney","tag-lehigh-county-homicide-task-force","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-state-police","tag-robert-l-steinberg","tag-toolmark-laboratory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}