{"id":137511,"date":"2026-03-13T16:44:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T16:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/137511\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T16:44:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T16:44:32","slug":"police-man-jumped-into-lehigh-river-to-avoid-arrest-search-now-suspended-nazareth-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/137511\/","title":{"rendered":"Police: Man jumped into Lehigh River to avoid arrest, search now suspended | Nazareth Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NORTHAMPTON BOROUGH, Pa. (WFMZ) &#8212; The search for a man who police say ran into the Lehigh River Thursday afternoon has been called off.<\/p>\n<p>Police said he had just been served a warrant and was running to avoid arrest when he was seen going into the water, but not coming out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a pretty high likelihood that this is not going to have a good outcome,&#8221; said Coplay police chief Ryan Emerich.<\/p>\n<p>Emerich says a Northampton man who was served an arrest warrant by Lehigh County sheriff&#8217;s deputies ran from law enforcement before jumping into the Lehigh River Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The male then attempted to cross the Lehigh River,&#8221; Emerich stated.<\/p>\n<p>At that point, Emerich told 69 News, the man went under water.<\/p>\n<p>According to dispatchers, the person in the water is a black male wearing a yellow and blue hoodie.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We dispatched UTV&#8217;s to search the area. We dispatched drones from the county. We also dispatched several boats. We&#8217;ve been using underwater sonar to try to track this person down but we have not had any success at this point. At some points, within 3 to 5 feet of the actual riverbank, it&#8217;s up to 25 feet. That current is going. We&#8217;ve seen some ducks and other animals and they are just flying down that river,&#8221; Emerich said.<\/p>\n<p>After six hours crews exhausted all efforts to find the man and will resume the search if new information comes in. At this point, they&#8217;re not releasing the man&#8217;s identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORTHAMPTON BOROUGH, Pa. (WFMZ) &#8212; The search for a man who police say ran into the Lehigh River&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,31,5750],"class_list":["post-137511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-crime","tag-nazareth-northampton-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137511","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=137511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}