READING, Pa – Outside the DoubleTree Hotel on Penn Street, days after a tragedy, a friend is being warmly remembered.<\/p>\n
“I kinda broke down and little bit of tears and went in the Facebook and wrote him a long message. Just really sad that I didn’t get to spend more time with him,” said Rodney Shipe.<\/p>\n
Police say 57-year-old Jorge Luis Ocasio-Ortiz of Reading was shot by Hamlet Vargas of Ohio.<\/p>\n
Police say it stemmed from a prior altercation and that Ocasio-Ortiz was an innocent bystander trying to help when he got shot.<\/p>\n
“I think a lot of the situations that occur in this city are kind of pinpointed by arguments within a small group. I don’t think there’s a lot of random violence,” Shipe said.<\/p>\n
Rodney Shipe was friends with the victim and says Ocasio-Ortiz worked at the hotel for years.<\/p>\n
Former General Manager of the DoubleTree, Craig Poole, shared a statement, saying in part, quote: “I loved Jorge and his brother like a father would love his own son and will miss him dearly. This never should have happened.” He added that Jorge was creative and served others before himself.<\/p>\n
“We would pass each other on Penn Street and we’d stop and always have a conversation,” Shipe recalled.<\/p>\n
Rodney says Jorge loved the hotel and the City of Reading and that Rodney believes Jorge died trying to help someone else.<\/p>\n
“It seems like he did it trying to help someone else as well, which I can believe that thoroughly because he was always somebody that went out of their way to help somebody in need or in distress,” he recalled.<\/p>\n
Rodney says Jorge will be remembered for his sacrifice and the positive impact he had on his family and friends.<\/p>\n
“In my eyes, what I understand about the situation, he died a hero,” added Rodney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa – Outside the DoubleTree Hotel on Penn Street, days after a tragedy, a friend is being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[75393,24243,72055,72054,736,128,130,129,75392],"class_list":["post-167297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-craig-poole","tag-doubletree-hotel","tag-hamlet-vargas","tag-jorge-luis-ocasio-ortiz","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-rodney-shipe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167297","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=167297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}