READING, Pa. – A Reading man is behind bars and facing murder charges following a shooting inside a home on the city’s south side.<\/p>\n
51-year-old Ismael Echevarria-Vazquez is charged with first and third-degree murder, aggravated assault, possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance and related offenses.<\/p>\n
In the early morning hours of Monday, December 29th, a Reading Police officer sitting in a patrol car near city hall was approached by Echevarria-Vazquez, who allegedly told the officer he just shot someone that entered his residence and wanted to turn himself in.<\/p>\n
Police detained Echevarria-Vazquez as they conducted an initial search of a home in the 400 block of S. 9th Street.<\/p>\n
Inside, they found the body of Brian Ramirez-Ortiz in a first-floor room surrounded by broken glass from a nearby window. Police say the suspect is the sole resident of the home.<\/p>\n
Investigators say neighbors reported hearing gunshots on Christmas and then two to four gunshots on December 28th.<\/p>\n
After obtaining a warrant, officers processed the scene and recovered two 9mm casings near the victim’s body, a butane torch shaped to look like a firearm from the victim’s front waistband, a pair of sneakers with what appeared to be blood splatter on them in a second-floor room and four bricks of suspected heroin.<\/p>\n
An autopsy confirmed Ramirez-Ortiz’s death as a homicide caused by a gunshot wound to the head.<\/p>\n
According to court documents, December 28th surveillance footage from the 700 block of Chestnut Street allegedly shows Echevarria-Vazquez and Ramirez-Ortiz talking and hanging out before entering the S. 9th Street home with an unknown male. The suspect and the unknown man were allegedly observed leaving the home a short time later.<\/p>\n
Echevarria-Vazquez is being held without bail at Berks County Jail. He has a preliminary hearing scheduled for January 16th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – A Reading man is behind bars and facing murder charges following a shooting inside a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[8335,39268,457,39267,28,736,128,130,129,1751],"class_list":{"0":"post-76306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county-jail","9":"tag-brian-ramirez-ortiz","10":"tag-homicide","11":"tag-ismael-echevarria-vazquez","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-reading","14":"tag-reading-city","15":"tag-reading-city-headlines","16":"tag-reading-city-news","17":"tag-reading-police"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76306","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=76306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}