Whitehall News

A Lehigh County Prison inmate testified Wednesday he met William M. Torres in the prison's intake unit in January and warned him he shouldn't be bragging that he shot two men outside an Allentown grocery store in December.

Guillermo Jose Rivera was arrested on Jan. 25 on a state parole violation and housed in the same unit as Torres, who had just been interviewed by a detective about the killings of Carlos F. Collazo, 32, and Jorge Luis Camacho, 36, both of Allentown.

Torres told Rivera that, during the police interview, he lied by saying the shooting was in self-defense, according to testimony at Torres' preliminary hearing. Rivera testified Torres said he got out of a car and began shooting at the men on Dec. 12, 2007 outside Dayoub Produce International Grocery, but never told him why he did it.

PennDOT reports lane restrictions on the following roads in Lehigh County: Orefield Road in South Whitehall and North Whitehall townships, between Route 309 and Church Street 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 14 ...

A Whitehall Township man scheduled to be sentenced Monday on charges he swindled a Penn Forest Township man out of more than $122,000 failed to show up in Carbon County Court, prompting a judge to issue a bench warrant for his arrest.

Edwin D. Kistler's victim waited, as did Assistant District Attorney James M. Lavelle, President Judge Roger N. Nanovic and even defense lawyer Michael E. Brunnabend, who said his client knew of the hearing and that he had left Kistler a telephone message.

Kistler, 60, of 1301 Mickley Road, on April 14 pleaded guilty to a felony theft-by-deception charge as jurors were being selected to hear his case. He admitted he promised George Abrachinsky, the father of his former girlfriend, big returns on his investment, but took the money instead.

Whitehall police are investigating a series of suspicious fires that damaged three vehicles, including one owned by the township water authority, early yesterday, police said.

Route 863 in Lynn Township, near Allemaengel Road, will be closed 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. July 10 for pipe replacement.

Rising gas prices are driving some Lehigh Valley residents to leave their cars at home and hop on the bus.

Officials from the Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority Tuesday reported bus ridership has increased steadily since March and in June spiked with a 14.7 percent increase. About 470,000 riders used LANTA last month.

Ridership had declined earlier in the year in what the authority's Executive Director Armando Greco said he thought was a reaction to a fare hike from the year before. But after gas prices started picking up in March, he said ridership numbers started picking up too.

A Whitehall Township man was arrested Tuesday after Bethlehem police found his ex-girlfriend beaten and bleeding in her Bethlehem home.

An overheated piece of plastic caused a smoky fire at a processing facility in Northampton last night.

Urging the borough to work out its own problems, Whitehall Township commissioners this week publicly opposed any plan to provide fire protection to Coplay, now in the middle of an internal conflict over the future of its firefighting operations.

''Do we really want our volunteers to be in the midst of all this controversy, all of this fighting?'' said board President Linda Snyder in an interview Tuesday, reflecting similar comments she made Monday night at the commissioners' workshop meeting. There, all six of her colleagues ''informally agreed with her reasoning,'' according to notes sent to The Morning Call by Township Executive Edward Hozza.

A 25-year-old Allentown man told police he was abducted at knifepoint early Monday and escaped in South Whitehall Township, Allentown police said.

For the first time since the early 1990s, the state Legislature has passed a budget ensuring that state basic education money for school districts is based on a stable funding formula.

While many people may think of Whitehall Township in Lehigh County as an area bustling with traffic, big box stores, and shopping malls, there's a unique piece of property that's gone untouched by developers ...

Whitehall Township and Coplay Borough officials have agreed to discuss the township taking over firefighting in the borough.

''The township would be willing to sit down and discuss with Borough Council the need for fire protection from Whitehall Township,'' said Whitehall Township Executive Edward Hozza Jr., adding that he and Borough Council President Beverly Miller have not set a time.

Miller said she is waiting for Hozza to get back to her with a date.

Coplay officials said they have been looking outside the borough for fire protection in the wake of rising costs linked to a conflict between the borough and the Coplay Fire Company, a social organization which owns the building housing borough fire operations.

Lower Macungie officials for years have argued they've been able to spare residents a municipal property tax in part by relying on state police to patrol township roads.

But state police coverage would cost Lower Macungie nearly $2 million a year and North Whitehall nearly $1.5 million if a western Pennsylvania lawmaker gets his way.

Contending that those townships and others have been pushing their expenses onto the rest of the state, Rep. John E. Pallone, D-Westmoreland, is proposing a bill that would charge municipalities with more than 10,000 people $100 per resident per year for state police help.

Members of the Baldwin-Whitehall Council of PTAs and their children traveled to Harrisburg recently in an effort to secure increased support for the school district's students and programs.

Whitehall Township police are looking for a man who broke into the AT&T store in the township early Friday morning and made off with an unknown amount of money.

A man accused of retail theft Tuesday ran across the parking lot at Burlington Coat Factory, stole a car and crashed into three cars while trying to escape, Whitehall Township police said.

About 10,000 PPL customers in Allentown lost power this morning for about two hours because of a squirrel.

Todd Brown was parked at a video store in Whitehall to get a movie for his family Tuesday afternoon when he witnessed a drama seemingly scripted by Hollywood: Three young men were walking south on MacArthur Road, one cursing at the others and holding a gun in plain view.

''I thought it was some kind of joke at first,'' said Brown, 45, a township resident.

But it turned out to be no laughing matter, according to Brown.

As police drove south on MacArthur, sirens blaring, the man with the gun approached a woman in a sport-utility vehicle stopped at a light facing west on Schadt Avenue. The man pointed the gun at the woman and forced her and several other women out of the SUV.

The woman who struck and killed former Parkland High School wrestling coach John Toggas will only face drunken-driving charges, authorities said today.