A man has been arrested in a shooting in the parking lot of a Walmart store in eastern Pennsylvania that killed a woman and wounded another person, authorities said.
Edward Joel Rosario-Jimenez, 23, was charged Sunday with criminal homicide, attempted criminal homicide and aggravated assault as well as a firearms offense, Lehigh County prosecutors and Whitehall Township police said.
Officers called to the Whitehall Township Walmart parking lot just before 7 p.m. Friday found two victims near a parked car with the engine still running. The county coroner's office said the woman had one or more gunshot wounds to the body and was pronounced dead shortly after 7:30 p.m. Friday at Lehigh Valley Hospital Cedar Crest.
The coroner's office identified her Sunday as 20-year-old Nicolette Law of Allentown. An autopsy is scheduled Monday, but the coroner's office said she died of one or more gunshot wounds and her death was ruled a homicide. No information was immediately available about the second victim.
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Authorities said store surveillance video showed the victim's vehicle arriving in an area of the merchandise pickup lot and within minutes a sport utility vehicle parking in front of that vehicle. A witness who told police she had gone to the parking lot to pick up her child, who is also the child of one of the shooting victims, said she and two other people arrived in the SUV, which was driven by the defendant.
The witness said the defendant got into an argument with one of the victims, and she heard gunshots and left in the SUV, but he remained in the lot, authorities said. Another witness reported seeing the defendant firing several gunshots at the victims. A handgun was found hidden in a snowbank nearby, authorities said.
A listed number for Rosario-Jiminez couldn't be found Sunday; a message could not be left Sunday at at the county public defender's office, which represented him in a previous case.
