Driver Charged In Fatality, But Road Shares Blame

Map of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States with township and municipal boundaries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a press conference aimed at Route 222 drivers but mostly at PennDOT, Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams announced Friday that police have filed homicide charges against the New Jersey trucker who caused the most horrific of several fatal accidents on that congested highway.

The Oct. 22, 2012, crash in Maidencreek Township killed Lauren Boyer, 45, of Richmond Township when a tractor-trailer squashed her stopped car into the stopped truck ahead of her.

It also injured three people, one of them still undergoing treatment and surgeries.

Earlier Friday, Northern Berks Regional Police filed charges of homicide by vehicle, involuntary manslaughter and related offenses against the truck driver, Emilio Perez-Pazmino, 62, of Jersey City.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=515675

Shooting Witness Catches Suspect In Reading Homicide

A 1947 topographic map of the Reading, Pennsylvania area. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A man was shot and killed and his son wounded early Sunday in the 800 block of Elm Street, Reading police said.

When police arrived they learned an acquaintance of the victims was holding the man suspected to be the gunman nearby.

The acquaintance, 28, had witnessed the shooting and chased the suspect, yelling for him to stop, police said.

Police were first dispatched about 2:20 a.m. to Elm Street, where they found the 49-year-old victim dead on the sidewalk.  They also found that his 29-year-old son had been shot in the upper torso and driven to a local hospital in a private vehicle.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=491404

Reading Taking Aim At The Drug Trade

Editor’s note:  Dear Attorney General Kane.  Please zero in on Pottstown (18 miles from Reading).  It is overrun with drug dealers, Section 8 slumlords and has a very high crime rate.  The police force is overwhelmed.

Reading is one of the portals through which much of Pennsylvania is receiving illegal drugs, and state Attorney General Kathleen Kane has proposed a plan that she says could help stanch the flow.

“The major source of supply into Harrisburg and Lancaster and York is coming from Reading,” Kane said during an interview with the Reading Eagle at her office in Harrisburg.

Nearing the midway point of her first year in elective office, she said she viewed illegal drugs as the top issue for her in Berks County.  Other pressing issues include child sex predators and consumer protection.  Kane previously worked as a Lackawanna County prosecutor and as an attorney.

Supplies of crack, PCP, heroin or marijuana come to Reading from places such as Arizona, Illinois and New York, with the original major source being Mexico, Kane said.  In Reading, the drugs are repackaged into street-sale quantities and sent out to other parts of Pennsylvania.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=485005

Mapping System Keeps Berks Residents Abreast Of Crime

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Berks County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Editor’s note:  This is an awesome tool!!!

Of the four reported crimes in Birdsboro between March 20 and Tuesday, none was likely to be newsworthy.

The crimes reported to police, according to www.CrimeMapping.com, were a vandalism incident at East Second and Hook streets; a theft in the 300 block of Furnace Street; a burglary in the 900 block of Berks Street; and a drunken driver in the 400 block of East Eighth Street.

But just because these apparently unrelated incidents didn’t grab headlines doesn’t mean nobody besides the victims is interested.

As a way of helping the public keep abreast of crimes in their communities, nearly every police department in Berks County feeds data to www.CrimeMapping.com.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=464627

Reading Crime Summit Objectives Outlined

Map of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States with township and municipal boundaries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Momentum toward creating a new, multijurisdiction approach to attacking crime in Reading and Berks County gathered quickly at a Thursday meeting called by county officials to plan next month’s crime summit.

The summit is set for Jan. 18, but District Attorney John T. Adams, county commissioners and others made it clear that a push to redeploy area law enforcement assets would start before then.

Their main reason was that, summit or not, there appears to be little hope of getting significant help from the financially strapped state and federal governments to deal with city and county crime.

“It is using our existing resources and redeploying them more effectively than we have in the past,” said state Sen. Judy Schwank, a Ruscombmanor Township Democrat. “I don’t see a cavalry coming.”

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=435148