{"id":129033,"date":"2026-03-04T04:55:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/129033\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T04:55:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:55:31","slug":"jury-selection-underway-in-case-of-whitehall-man-who-ran-off-to-mexico-with-teen-allentown-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/129033\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury selection underway in case of Whitehall man who ran off to Mexico with teen | Allentown Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. &#8211; A Lehigh Valley man who made international headlines in 2018 for running away to Mexico with a teenage girl is standing trial this week.<\/p>\n<p>Jurors are being selected Tuesday in the trial of Kevin Esterly of Whitehall Township.<\/p>\n<p>It comes a day after a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/admin.bloxcms.com\/wfmz.com\/editorial\/edit\/b4fe141a-332b-4eb0-bbd4-b2af007221ad\/#media-gallery\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">judge denied his request to remove the Lehigh County district attorney&#8217;s office<\/a> from the case and to have new charges against him thrown out.<\/p>\n<p>Esterly is <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wfmz.com\/news\/area\/lehighvalley\/lehigh-county\/lehigh-county-man-accused-of-raping-giving-drugs-to-teen-faces-alleged-victim-in-court\/article_b3909e87-c9f8-49a8-8bd6-4dbe8cef639e.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting a girl<\/a> and giving her drugs over a period of years and then fleeing to Mexico with her when she was 16.<\/p>\n<p>He previously pleaded not guilty to sexual assault and related charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. &#8211; A Lehigh Valley man who made international headlines in 2018 for running away to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,2675,60030,39220,60029,59590,433,13822,337,14839,1654],"class_list":{"0":"post-129033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news","11":"tag-child-abuse","12":"tag-criminal-trial","13":"tag-drug-crime","14":"tag-jury-selection","15":"tag-kevin-esterly","16":"tag-lehigh-county","17":"tag-mexico","18":"tag-sexual-assault","19":"tag-teenager","20":"tag-whitehall-township"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129033","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=129033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}