Police trying to unravel bridge homicide case
Officials say they know who was involved
Pas Simpson spent the weekend making sure things stayed calm following the Saturday afternoon shooting death of 21-year-old Christian J. Lopez Rodriguez on the Hamilton Street Bridge in Allentown.
That’s part of his job running Zero Youth Violence, a program of the nonprofit Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley. There were several near-conflicts he had to mediate, he said. Monday he began the job of figuring out why Lopez Rodriguez died.
Lopez Rodriguez, known as “Slash” to friends and family, died just before 4 p.m. Saturday at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, about a half-hour after he was shot in the 100 block of East Hamilton Street in Allentown, the Lehigh County coroner said. The manner of death was homicide.
Allentown police don’t yet have a shooter in custody, but they know who was involved — it’s just a matter of sorting out who did what, Capt. John Hill said.
Acandle vigil sits at the corner of Gordon and Sixth streets outside the apartment where Lopez Rodriguez lived with his aunt.
Next to about two dozen candles on the sidewalk, a cardboard box-turned-poster board and the wall behind it are filled with messages of love, “Rest in peace” and “Long live Slash,” an ode to the nickname he had since he was a student at Dieruff High School, a family member said.
Angela, a fried who did not provide her last name, said he worked almost every day and came straight home. The day he was shot, she said, he had the day off and was walking across the bridge to visit family in east Allentown. He was always looking for ways to save money, she said. He walked that day so he could save money on bus fare.
“I wish he would have taken the bus,” she said outside her home Monday.
Simpson said there is a “street element” to Lopez Rodriguez’s death, but the circumstances beyond that are unclear.
“It’s sad, though,” he said, thinking too of 17-year-old Whitehall wrestler Aiden Toussaint, who was shot to death this month. “These kids that are dying right now, these aren’t bad kids.”
He views the murders as part of a system that fails to teach young people of all walks of life
how to find success in today’s world.
“The system is broken and our kids are paying for it,” he said. “When you know better, you do better.”
The Lehigh County district attorney office’s Homicide Task Force and the Lehigh County coroner’s office are assisting with the investigation.
Lopez Rodriguez was the city’s sixth gun-related homicide of 2020, surpassing 2019 s total.
Family said Lopez Rodriguez was looking forward to becoming an uncle to his sister’s expected child, and that he wanted a family of his own someday.
“I’m still looking for him to come in,” his aunt said. “Every day.”