Published March 28. 2026 09:04AM<\/p>\n
The shooting of a 26-year-old North Whitehall man in January by a state police trooper was justified, Lehigh County Coroner Gavin P. Holihan said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He said the trooper reasonably believed that the man represented an imminent risk of death or serious bodily injury to himself or another person.<\/p>\n
In a six-page report, Holihan detailed the incident that occurred at 11:03 a.m. Jan. 24 when state police were called by the parents of the man who they said barricaded himself inside a vehicle parked in the family\u2019s driveway.<\/p>\n
The parents told police the man was armed with a .22-caliber handgun and was acting erratically, threatening himself.<\/p>\n
The report said that when police arrived, they attempted to convince the man to get out of the vehicle.<\/p>\n
He fired two shots in an unknown direction and then pointed the gun toward himself and in the direction of troopers multiple times.<\/p>\n
Police were able to make contact with the man via telephone and asked him to get out of the vehicle, but he hung up.<\/p>\n
At one point, police said, the man rapidly pointed the pistol with a two-handed grip in the direction of other troopers who were directly in front of him.<\/p>\n
To prevent harm and\/or death to the troopers within the man\u2019s sight, the trooper shot through the driver\u2019s side door window with one round, which struck the man.<\/p>\n
Troopers were able to remove him from the vehicle and began to perform lifesaving measures. He was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he underwent surgery but died.<\/p>\n
Holihan said his review prompted him to conclude that the trooper was justified in using deadly force and that no criminal charges were appropriate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published March 28. 2026 09:04AM The shooting of a 26-year-old North Whitehall man in January by a state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-150904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150904","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=150904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}