A West Reading man was arrested early Saturday on charges related to using fireworks in an unsafe location early Saturday, according to borough police.<\/p>\n
Malachi N. Sweigart, 20, of the 700 block of Wayne Avenue, remained free after arraignment on a felony charge of risking a catastrophe and disorderly conduct counts before District Judge Colleen Dugan Schearer in Reading Central Court.<\/p>\n
West Reading police gave this account:<\/p>\n
Officers were called to the 700 block of Wayne Avenue at about 12:25 a.m. Saturday. It was the third time police were called to the scene due to fireworks, but previously officers did not see who was lighting them.<\/p>\n
Police monitored the scene in an attempt to catch someone in the act of lighting fireworks. They said the activity was taking place in a narrow alley with heavy shrubbery and trees, overhead wires and dry conditions that made for a significant fire risk. The aerial pyrotechnics being used exploded over the roofs of nearby homes, putting them at risk of fire.<\/p>\n
After officers witnessed Sweigart lighting one of the explosives, they arrested him just after 1 a.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A West Reading man was arrested early Saturday on charges related to using fireworks in an unsafe location…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,202,182,139,28,128,130,129,706,707],"class_list":["post-236811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg","tag-west-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236811","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=236811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}