Ex-Employee Brought Machete to Car Wash, Police Say

Palmer Township police were dispatched around 6:15 Sunday morning to Rudy’s Car Wash, after a former employee allegedly showed up with a machete

The man who allegedly had the machete—Vernon Fountain Jr. of Easton—did not attack anyone, but he displayed the weapon at a store clerk and had a “verbal altercation” with him, causing the clerk “annoyance and alarm,” court records say.

Fountain, 23, who was charged with prohibited offensive weapon and disorderly conduct, placed the machete in a garbage can outside the store at 25th and Northampton streets before police arrived, the records say.

He allegedly admitted to police that he had the machete and to cutting himself with it. The records do not provide details about the cut.

A criminal complaint filed by Palmer Township officer John T. Smoke Jr. says Fountain and the clerk are friends.

Surveillance video shows Fountain—a tall man at 6-foot-3 and 180 pounds—removed the machete from his waistband and “began wielding [it] in an aggravated manner,” the complaint says.

The video shows the clerk “backing up in a concerned manner.”

The complaint’s lead sheet does not list an address for Fountain. But elsewhere in his file is an address of 933 Lehigh St., Easton.

Fountain was arraigned at noon Sunday by on-duty District Judge Diane Marakovits of Northampton and committed to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $5,000 bail.