{"id":194686,"date":"2026-05-17T04:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T04:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/194686\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T04:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T04:56:11","slug":"2-charged-in-connection-with-shooting-at-allentown-park-lehigh-valley-regional-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/194686\/","title":{"rendered":"2 charged in connection with shooting at Allentown park | Lehigh Valley Regional News"},"content":{"rendered":"

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Two men are behind bars after officials say a man died of gunshot wounds Saturday on an Allentown basketball court.<\/a><\/p>\n

Officials are crediting the arrests in large part to newly installed technology,<\/a> including license plate readers and surveillance cameras placed across the city.<\/p>\n

Allentown resident Carlos Caban was heading to the lake, just beyond the basketball court at Fountain Park, when he heard the gunshots.<\/p>\n

“We heard gunshots and then we see everybody running,” Caban said.<\/p>\n

Caban says before he knew it, police were arriving on scene.<\/p>\n

“It took them like two minutes to get here,” he said.<\/p>\n

Police responded around 6:30 p.m. Saturday to find 25-year-old Angel Martinez-Velez dead on the basketball court. The coroner ruled it a homicide, saying the cause of death is multiple gunshot wounds.<\/p>\n

Just four days later, two arrests were made.<\/p>\n

27-year-old Grelvis Cabrera and 18-year-old Carlos Landesta-Agramonte on Wednesday were charged with the first-degree felony, conspiracy to commit homicide, and a misdemeanor related to tampering with evidence.<\/p>\n

In detailed affidavits, authorities recount the numerous surveillance cameras and license plate readers used to track down the two suspects.<\/p>\n

It’s a recent city investment in Flock Safety license plate reading cameras and gunshot detection technology, paid for by millions in grants.<\/p>\n

“Millions of dollars?” Eddie Hernandez, playing basketball at Fountain Park on Thursday, said. “Nah, that’s crazy. “That’s good though.”<\/p>\n

The city has strategically placed 67 cameras, as well as one square mile worth of audio detectors, throughout Allentown.<\/a><\/p>\n

In a statement, state Rep. Josh Seigel praised law enforcement for use of the technology, saying in part:<\/p>\n

“The swiftness of these arrests is a testament to the sophistication and dedication of our police department and our District Attorney’s Office…”<\/p>\n

And the teens and young adults, who play ball at Fountain Park multiple times a week, agree.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, it was worth it,” Hernandez said.<\/p>\n

“It really is important,” Caban said. “I feel like it’s a great, great thing that they did that.”<\/p>\n

On the night of the homicide, police flooded Fountain Park Saturday. Then, they got right to work, following footage across the city.<\/p>\n

City cameras show two cars matching witness descriptions, fleeing the scene that day, appearing to travel together, at high speeds.<\/p>\n

A dark-colored Honda had a passenger with a red jacket. Witnesses also said the gunman was wearing a red jacket. That red jacket would later be seen in surveillance shots, as a passenger handed it off to a rear passenger, who was later identified as Landesta-Agramonte, according to court paperwork. He was seeing removing the red jacket from a car and bringing it into a garage, authorities say.<\/p>\n

The second car seen was a white Infiniti, found to be registered to Landesta-Agramonte, court documents say.<\/p>\n

Footage shows the two suspects meeting with several other men, who appeared to remove items from their cars, transferring them into a garage on Court Street.<\/p>\n

Those items were later recovered from another vehicle. The items included black face masks, which were seen on the suspects at the time of the shooting.<\/p>\n

The owner of the car that the items were recovered from consented to a search and told authorities he’d never seen the items before.<\/p>\n

Both Cabrera and Landesta-Agramonte have been charged with conspiracy to commit homicide and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.<\/p>\n

Cabrera and Landesta-Agramonte later admitted to being at the park during the shooting, according to authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Two men are behind bars after officials say a man died of gunshot wounds Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,31,433,805,10466],"class_list":["post-194686","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-allentown-area","tag-crime","tag-lehigh-county","tag-lehighvalley","tag-week-in-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194686","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=194686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}