Second brother sentenced in deadly melee

A 20-year-old Allentown man will serve 40-80 months in state prison for shooting a man during a fracas that left a woman dead last summer.

The sentencing for Jasiah Lopez in Lehigh County Court was the final chapter in a legal drama that ended with two brothers behind bars for taking part in a brawl that both the judge and prosecutors derided as “senseless” and indicative of the violence in some Allentown neighborhoods.

“At the end of the day, it’s a sad commentary about what’s going on in certain parts of the city,” First Assistant District Attorney Steven Luksa said. “It boggles the mind, the need for a gun, the need to pull out a gun in a street fight that you weren’t even a part of.”

Lopez apologized to his family during an emotional hearing Tuesday and said he regretted his part in the fight that left 33-year-old Lauren

Gonzalez dead.

“I made a selfish decision. I could’ve gone a whole other way about it. I could’ve minded my own business,” he said.

Lopez admitted shooting Gonzalez’s boyfriend, Justin Trinidad, 26, during the July 12, 2019, fight in the 400 block of North Church Street, behind St. Luke’s Lutheran Church. Prosecutors said Trinidad and Gonzalez were using a nearby home to sell drugs, and confronted a group of people who were having a noisy argument outside.

The couple complained that all the bickering outside was scaring off their customers, Luksa said. As the argument escalated, Lopez and his brother, Isaiah, 21, who lived nearby but were not part of the original fight, joined in. After Gonzalez broke a bottle on one Lopez brother’s head and slapped the other, the brothers brought out handguns.

Isaiah Lopez shot and killed Gonzalez. Jasiah Lopez admitted firing four or five shots, hitting Trinidad in the leg. He pleaded guilty last month to aggravated assault.

Isaiah Lopez was sentenced last month to 18-40 years in state prison for third-degree murder.

In court Tuesday, Jasiah Lopez’s attorney, James A. Katz Jr., said his client was shot in an unrelated incident several months earlier, and became frightened when he heard Gonzalez tell her boyfriend to get a gun.

“He heard shots and he panicked, and he ended up shooting him,” Katz said.

Trinidad was not in court Tuesday.

Banach told Lopez that he needed to turn his life around to be a better role model for his younger brothers and baby daughter.

“You have to want something better for yourself than this life on the streets,” she told him.