A Reading man was arrested Wednesday in the predawn ambush shooting of a man he described as his romantic rival, police said.<\/p>\n
Jose Gastambides-Martinez, 51, was taken into custody by Reading police officers after he left his home in the 100 block of Patton Avenue.<\/p>\n
Officers had his car under surveillance because video footage tied the vehicle to the shooting, which occurred about 5 a.m. in the 100 block of Church Street, according to court records. They stopped Gastambides-Martinez in the car as he began to drive away and took him to City Hall for questioning.<\/p>\n
Gastambides-Martinez admitted that he left his home about 4:15 a.m. drove to the first block of Church Street \u2014 one block from the 47-year-old victim\u2019s home \u2014 and waited for him to leave, police said.<\/p>\n
He said he walked up to the victim after the victim got into the driver\u2019s seat of his work van and fired at least three shots at him, according to police.<\/p>\n
Police responded to a report of a shooting but didn\u2019t find a victim because someone had driven the victim to Reading Hospital. Officers went to the hospital to look for a victim and found a bullet-riddled van illegally parked at the emergency entrance.<\/p>\n
Officers learned the victim had been taken into the emergency room for surgery. Information on his medical condition wasn\u2019t immediately available, but police said indications are that it is stable.<\/p>\n
Gastambides-Martinez was charged with attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault and illegally acquiring a firearm.<\/p>\n
He was committed to Berks County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail to await a hearing following arraignment Wednesday night before District Judge Michael D. Kaufman in Reading Central Court.<\/p>\n
According to court records:<\/p>\n
Officers saw the windshield of the van had four bullet holes. A large amount of blood was on the front passenger seat and front passenger door.<\/p>\n
A witness said the victim was in the driver\u2019s seat when he was shot by a male standing in front of the van.<\/p>\n
Video footage shows the entire incident. After shooting the victim, the suspect runs southbound, crossing Washington Street, and gets into an SUV.<\/p>\n
Data from traffic cameras tracked the movement of the SUV, which was registered to Gastambides-Martinez. The SUV heads west on Washington, south on Second Street and southbound across the Bingaman Street Bridge.<\/p>\n
Security cameras in the 1000 block of Patton Avenue show Gastambides-Martinez, wearing similar clothing as the suspect, getting out of the SUV and walking toward his residence. No one else is seen leaving the vehicle.<\/p>\n
Gastambides-Martinez told investigators that he and Gastambides-Martinez were having issues for several months over a woman they had both been involved with, prompting him to buy a .380-caliber handgun on the street.<\/p>\n
He said he tossed the gun out the window, along with a bandanna and baseball that he was wearing during the ambush, as he drove away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Reading man was arrested Wednesday in the predawn ambush shooting of a man he described as his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,202,182,139,28,736,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-53167","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","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53167","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=53167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}