South Whitehall Township police officer shoots, kills man across from Dorney Park

555 A man was shot and killed Saturday evening by a South Whitehall Township police officer, township police Chief Glen Dorney confirmed. The shooting happened about 5:44 p.m. in front of 3712 Hamilton Blvd. (Route 222) in the township, the Lehigh County Coroner's Office said about 11 p.m. Saturday. That is near Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom. Pennsylvania State Police, the Lehigh County District Attorney's Homicide Task Force and District Attorney Jim Martin were investigating, along with the coroner's office. A witness said a man was banging on the windows of passing cars prior to the shooting, according to a report from the scene. "The guy was behaving, what I would characterize as, bizarrely," Martin told lehighvalleylive.com. He ripped out the window of one vehicle and held on as the car continued to move, according to the district attorney. "There were several encounters, perhaps as many as four or five," Martin said. In a posted on Facebook, the man is near a police vehicle on the passenger side but then walks away. The officer yells several times for the man to get on the ground, but the man walks back toward the officer and as he gets near, the officer fires five shots and the man drops. The shooting victim was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital, Salisbury Township. He was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m., according to the coroner's office. An autopsy was scheduled for Tuesday to determine the cause and manner of death, the office's morgue manager, Raymond Anthony, said in a news release. Authorities were calling the victim a John Doe, and Martin said he did not immediately know where the man was from. Nor did authorities identify the police officer involved. Martin stressed the investigation was in its early stages and said that investigators spoke with several witnesses about what they had seen.

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