Published March 06. 2019 07:56AM
ALLENTOWN (AP) — A man has pleaded guilty in last summer’s shooting outside an eastern Pennsylvania mall store that injured two people.
Twenty-year-old Miles Harper pleaded guilty Tuesday to aggravated assault in a deal in which Lehigh county prosecutors dropped attempted homicide counts.
Prosecutors said a June 1 fight near the cosmetics section of Macy’s at the Lehigh Valley Mall continued outside the store and involved about 10 men. Prosecutors said Harper was a member of a Bethlehem-based gang, and one of the two people wounded was a member of a rival gang.
Defense attorney Michael Moyer said he will argue that the organization to which his client belongs isn’t a gang and the dispute wasn’t gang-related. He said Harper “didn’t go to the mall looking for a fight, but he found one.”