{"id":283890,"date":"2026-09-11T16:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/283890\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T16:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:44:13","slug":"jury-convicts-whitehall-twp-man-for-2024-south-whitehall-twp-incident-lehigh-valley-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/283890\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury convicts Whitehall Twp man for 2024 South Whitehall Twp incident \u2013 Lehigh Valley Press"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Published September 11. 2026 09:46AM<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">A Whitehall Township man was convicted Sept. 3 on all charges in a South Whitehall Township rape and kidnapping case, according to Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin P. Holihan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">Erik Contes, 43, was found guilty of rape, kidnapping to facilitate a felony and sexual assault, all felonies, as well as misdemeanor indecent assault. The verdict followed a jury trial before Lehigh County Judge Robert L. Steinberg.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">Authorities said a South Whitehall Township police officer found Contes\u2019 vehicle parked near Wehr Mill and Old Sentry roads shortly after 2:30 a.m. June 2, 2024. The victim was highly intoxicated and required medical attention. Investigators later determined she had been raped and sexually assaulted, and DNA evidence matched Contes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">Contes faces a possible sentence of 26 to 52 years in prison and will be evaluated to determine whether he qualifies as a sexually violent predator. Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 7 before Steinberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published September 11. 2026 09:46AM A Whitehall Township man was convicted Sept. 3 on all charges in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-283890","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\/283890","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=283890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}