New details provided on Reading homicide last week

Reading police issued details Tuesday on a fatal shooting last week.

Officers responded shortly after 9:30 p.m. on January 12 to Ninth and Chestnut streets after a city fire department ambulance was flagged down, according to Chief Richard Tornielli.

The victim, who was later identified as Jarel Lunsford, 36, Reading, was transported to Reading Hospital, where he died, the chief said.

Tornielli gave this further account:

Through the course of the investigation, it was determined that Lunsford was a passenger in a vehicle that had been in the 200 block of Maple Street.

Lunsford had met with an unknown individual in the block, and during the encounter, shots were fired by Lunsford and the unknown individual.

Shortly thereafter, an additional unknown individual fired shots in the block.

Lunsford was placed inside the vehicle by the other occupants and driven from the scene to Ninth and Chestnut, where they found the ambulance, which was on its way to a different call.

At the time, the ambulance crew described the scene as a car with numerous bullet holes in the windshield.

The investigation is ongoing, and no arrests have been made, Tornielli said.

An autopsy was performed over the weekend but the Berks County coroner’s office has yet to release information about it.

Source: Berkshire mont