The article in the Lehigh Valley’s Morning Call does not give us the nationality or legal status of the alleged killer—Enrique M. Ortiz—but I am sure your guess is as good as mine!
Hagos F. Mezgebo, an African refugee living and working in Allentown, had been out with friends last month celebrating the start of his holidays with a few drinks in a bar at Ninth and Chew streets.
Around the same time, about eight blocks away, Enrique M. Ortiz had been thrown out of an Allentown nightclub and punched his girlfriend in the face during an argument about who would drive home.
The two men did not know each other, authorities said, but soon their lives would be tragically connected.
On Tuesday, Ortiz, 25, formerly of Allentown, was charged with gunning down Mezgebo early Jan. 7 at Fountain and Emmett streets, a short distance from the bar he had just left.
Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin said an investigation showed that the two men did not appear to know each other and could not say what prompted the shooting of Mezgebo, a 22-year-old man who fled war-torn Eritrea in the Horn of Africa and resettled in Allentown through the Catholic Charities, Diocese of Allentown.
Mezgebo was one more African refugee that Catholic Charities (with funding from you, through the US Conference of Catholic Bishops the federal contractor) installed in a meat packing job.
Mezgebo came to Allentown in December 2010. He fled Eritrea in the spring of 2008, making a dangerous, five-day journey to a refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia. If he stayed, Mezgebo would have been forced to fight in a war between the two countries that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Mezgebo lived in a home on N. 13th Street with other refugees and worked at a meat-processing plant in the city.…
Diversity sure is great for American cities and towns. Just a reminder, they had (may still be having) a lot of problems in Grand Island, Nebraska between Hispanics and Africans working at meat packing plants and living in close proximity. Remember this January 2010 “chaotic anarchy” story.