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3 People Found Shot To Death Inside Lehigh Valley Home

Shooting Believed To Be Gang-Related, Authorities Say

POSTED: 7:36 am EST November 29, 2007
UPDATED: 11:43 pm EST November 29, 2007

A man and two women were found shot to death in a city duplex when officers responded to a report of a disturbance early Thursday.



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Police said they are looking for two to three people who are at large but said they had no suspects or motive.

The Northampton County district attorney said evidence indicates the killings are gang-related and the victims were specifically.

"This is likely turf war or retaliation for actions from some other time," District Attorney John Morganelli said. "I believe it happened quickly, that the perps came in here, did their business and left."

The victims were identified as Alphe Rene, 21, Aleah Hamlin, 19, and her cousin Chanel Armour, 23, all of Easton.

It was just after 12:30 a.m. when police received a 911 call saying someone was possibly hurt inside the third-floor apartment at 128 North 13th Street, about a half-block from a middle school. The school was locked down as a precaution Thursday and all after-school activities were canceled.

When officers arrived at the home, they found the victims shot execution-style.

A 21-year-old man who was in the apartment when the shootings occurred was charged with giving false identification to authorities. Investigators would not say whether the man, Lakimdel Edward Spring, of Newark, N.J., is a suspect in the shootings.

Spring was jailed on $50,000 bail. District Judge Michael Koury Jr. said he set bail that high because Spring has a lengthy arrest record.

Spring told Koury he was in Easton looking for work and had been staying with a woman at the apartment. He asked to be kept out of jail.

"I'm scared the same thing that happened to those people is going to happen to me," he said.

Meanwhile, relatives of the two dead women gathered at a hospital to identify the victims, said Javan Shackelford, 59, of Allentown, who identified himself as the women's uncle.

Shackelford said he spoke with police at the crime scene but had few details of what happened.

"They just told me that they think they were sleeping in the bed and someone came in and shot them," Shackelford said.

"Both were good girls," Shackelford said. "They were in no gangs I know of."

The girls' uncle said his nieces, along with 30 other members of his family, moved to Easton from Newark, N.J., over the last few years to escape crime in Newark. The two girls had been taken in by a Good Samaritan.

The neighbor said of that woman, "She's just that type of person. If she finds out you're having trouble, she'll be the first one to help you. I don't know if trouble followed them here or what."

Morganelli said he believed the triple murder was the first in the county in more than 20 years, since three employees were shot in a June 1986 bank robbery.


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