{"id":88795,"date":"2026-01-16T19:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T19:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/88795\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T19:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T19:52:08","slug":"charges-to-be-filed-soon-in-lights-in-the-parkway-vandalism-allentown-police-chief-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/88795\/","title":{"rendered":"Charges to be filed soon in Lights in the Parkway vandalism, Allentown police chief says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Authorities expect to file charges soon regarding last month\u2019s significant vandalism at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2025\/12\/15\/lights-in-the-parkway-damage-estimated-to-be-more-than-50k-walk-through-still-on-for-monday\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Allentown\u2019s Lights in the Parkway.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Allentown police Chief Charles Roca said Friday investigators with the city and Lehigh County District Attorney\u2019s Office have been doing \u201cextensive interviews\u201d since shortly after the incident on Dec. 14 or 15 that left the popular holiday light display with $100,000 in damage and costs.<\/p>\n<p>The vandalism included bent light poles and posts, crushed light bulbs and portable restrooms that were pushed into the Little Lehigh Creek.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI expect we will be acting on that very soon,\u201d Roca said, later adding court complaints could be filed next week.<\/p>\n<p>He said investigators have been making sure all evidence is gathered before filing \u201cproper charges.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lights in the Parkway, which celebrated its 29th season during the Christmas holiday, offers a drive-thru display for motorists and riders along Lehigh Parkway. With more than 200,000 lights, it features tree-lined paths and animated scenes.<\/p>\n<p>Despite several light displays being destroyed, including \u201cOld Man Winter,\u201d \u201cPenguin with the Top Hat\u201d and \u201cFishing Penguins,\u201d the traditional holiday event was reopened shortly after the vandalism, in part with help from <a href=\"https:\/\/holidayoutdoordecor.com\/we-are-hod\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Holiday Outdoor Decor.<\/a> The East Allentown company loaned large holiday decorations to replace the damaged ones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we saw that vandalism happened, we were happy to call [the city] and loan some of the displays,\u201d company CEO Boris Bajlovic said this week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was really heartbreaking to see it being vandalized,\u201d said Bajlovic, whose company, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/1985\/11\/08\/rileighs-decorations-finds-room-to-grow\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">formerly known as Rileighs Inc<\/a>., has been around more than a century making and installing decorations nationally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Authorities expect to file charges soon regarding last month\u2019s significant vandalism at Allentown\u2019s Lights in the Parkway. Allentown&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[119,153,155,154,60,433,182,139,28,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-88795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-lehigh-county","14":"tag-local-news","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-pennsylvania","17":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88795","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=88795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}