ALLENTOWN, Pa. —\u00a0The Lehigh County District Attorney is saying police were justified in opening fire, in response to the Allentown mass shooting that happened during the city’s Dominican Festival.<\/p>\n
Two men were arrested in the incident in late-August.<\/p>\n
The D.A. isn’t identifying the officers, since he says their actions were justified.<\/p>\n
In his detailed release of the investigation’s conclusions, Gavin Holihan says after the two suspects opened fire on each other — while everyone was running away, four police officers ran toward the danger. And if they hadn’t, he believes that danger could have been much worse.<\/p>\n
Almost a month after gunshots were fired in the North 7th Street parking lot during Allentown’s Dominican Festival on August 25, Lehigh County D.A. Gavin Holihan released new details in a lengthy statement sent out Friday.<\/p>\n
Holihan says four police officers assigned to the North Lot for the fest all ran toward the gunshots. Two of those officers opened fire in response. Holihan determined the decision by police to fire shots was “completely justified.”<\/p>\n
The D.A. says officers first found Yunior Peralta-Quintana with a semi-automatic handgun, and gave verbal command first, before firing any shots.<\/p>\n
Peralta-Quintana, who’s since been arrested, allegedly ran toward one of the officers, pointing his gun at him.<\/p>\n
That officer fired back, Holihan says. The D.A. says during that time, the suspect “either dropped the gun or had it knocked from his hand.” Then he fled on foot.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, another of the four officers started running toward the sound of other gunshots. The D.A. says that officer found Miguel Angel Ovalles-Ubri allegedly shooting a handgun numerous times before he fled as well.<\/p>\n
Ovalles-Ubri, also has since been arrested.<\/p>\n
Holihan says it’s now “understood” that the suspects were firing at each other.<\/p>\n
Eight people were hit by gunfire, according to a criminal complaint. No one was killed.<\/p>\n
One officer each fired shots at the two suspects, totaling 12 shots.<\/p>\n
Holihan says to him, the “imminent risk” was clear. He adds that magazines recovered from each suspect proved to still have live rounds in them.<\/p>\n
“Thus, the action of these officers certainly ended an on-going and very real risk of death or serious bodily injury to numerous people in the North Lot that evening,” he said.<\/p>\n
After fleeing, Ovalles-Ubri was stopped and treated at the hospital for a gunshot wound.<\/p>\n
The D.A. says evidence shows that shot was fired by the other suspect. And he says there’s no evidence either of the officers’ shots hit either of the suspects, “or any other person.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. —\u00a0The Lehigh County District Attorney is saying police were justified in opening fire, in response to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,805],"class_list":["post-197826","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-lehighvalley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197826","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=197826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}