{"id":117248,"date":"2026-02-18T17:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T17:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/117248\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T17:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T17:12:10","slug":"allentown-police-officer-justified-in-shooting-woman-armed-with-knife-da-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/117248\/","title":{"rendered":"Allentown police officer justified in shooting woman armed with knife, DA says"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Allentown police officer was justified when he shot a distressed woman<\/a> last month, the Lehigh County District Attorney announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n

District Attorney Gavin P. Holihan said the 29-year-old woman was wielding a knife and what the officer thought might be a gun when she turned toward him on Jan. 11 at the former Good Shepherd Hospital in Allentown.<\/p>\n

The officer was trying to switch from his gun to a Taser to subdue her, but reacted quickly to what he thought was a lethal threat, Holihan said in a statement. <\/p>\n

He said the woman posed an imminent risk of harm to the officer as well as to two Allentown EMS medics, a hospital security guard and herself.<\/p>\n

Holihan didn\u2019t name the woman, who was shot in the pelvis but survived her injury, nor did he name the police officer.<\/p>\n

A security guard was working at the former Good Shepherd facility when he encountered the woman, whom he described as \u201cstressed, panicked and anxious.\u201d She claimed she was being abused. At her request, the guard called Allentown EMS, according to the news release.<\/p>\n

When the EMS workers and a police officer showed up, she took out the knife, the release says.<\/p>\n

The woman ignored 16 commands from the officer to drop the knife, the statement says.<\/p>\n

Then, she started rummaging through a box of her possessions with her back to the officer, the statement says. The officer was about to switch from his gun to his Taser when the woman turned back toward him with the device extended in her hand in what the officer described as a \u201cfiring manner,\u201d authorities said.<\/p>\n

Holihan reviewed the officer\u2019s body camera footage of the incident.<\/p>\n

The officer said that if he were incapacitated the woman could have taken his gun and ammunition, which would put him, the two medics, the guard and any other people in the building at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI conclude that the officer was justified in using deadly force during this incident and therefore no criminal charges are appropriate and no criminal charges will be approved by this office,\u201d Holihan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Allentown police officer was justified when he shot a distressed woman last month, the Lehigh County District…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-117248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117248","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=117248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}