A 31-year-old Allentown man has pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and aggravated assault in the New Year's Eve 2018 shooting that killed 23-year-old Kenyatta Eutsey and seriously wounded 24-year-old Dimitri Joseph, closing out a legal saga that stretched nearly eight years and survived two overturned convictions. Vyante Green entered the plea Thursday in Lehigh County, accepting a sentence of 22 to 50 years in prison.
Green has been in custody since his initial arrest in 2018, according to NBC10 Philadelphia, which reported that the shooting took place at a home rented for a New Year's Eve party in Allentown. Appellate court records show the Airbnb rental drew between 75 and 100 people that night, and that Eutsey and Joseph were cousins who had no prior relationship with Green, according to a Pennsylvania Superior Court opinion. Joseph was from New Jersey.
Green said Eutsey snatched his phone shortly after midnight. Court records describe Eutsey as noticeably larger than Green and Green as holding a bottle of Hennessy cognac in one hand and his phone in the other. Green admitted to shooting both men, telling investigators he fired at Eutsey because Eutsey had taken his cellphone, and that he shot Joseph immediately afterward. He acknowledged he had not seen a gun in either man's hand, per the same NBC10 report.
Flight, Arrest, and a First Conviction
Following the shooting, Green fled the party to a nearby after-hours club, prosecutors said, and disposed of the handgun used in the attack. According to court records, he discarded his clothing the following morning, went to New York a few days later and remained there for a week or two before planning to flee there more permanently. He remained at large for nearly five months until his arrest on May 23, 2018.
A Lehigh County jury convicted Green of first-degree murder in February 2020, and that August he was sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment without parole, along with a consecutive 20-to-40-year term for attempted homicide, the Pennsylvania Superior Court's opinion shows. But that conviction did not stand.
Two Appellate Reversals in Four Years
The Superior Court vacated Green's life sentence and ordered a new trial in March 2022, ruling that the trial judge had improperly denied a jury instruction on imperfect self-defense voluntary manslaughter — a legal theory that applies under Pennsylvania law when a defendant holds an honest but unreasonable belief that deadly force is necessary. Green was retried and found guilty of third-degree murder and aggravated assault in 2023, only for an appellate court to overturn that verdict as well, finding he should have been permitted to present character witnesses about his non-violent behavior.
Rather than face a third trial, Green accepted the negotiated plea this week. Under 18 Pa.C.S. § 1102(d) of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code, third-degree murder — defined as a killing committed with malice but without premeditated intent — carries a statutory maximum of 40 years, meaning Green's 22-to-50-year sentence reflects the combined weight of both the homicide and aggravated assault counts.
A City With a Changed Crime Picture
The case unfolded as Allentown's violent crime landscape shifted dramatically. In 2024, the city recorded just four homicides, down from 11 the year before and the lowest annual total since 1989, according to WDIY Local News.
Overall violent crime in the city fell 3.4% in 2023, and newly integrated license plate and street cameras helped with 349 police investigations in 2024, the outlet reported. The Lehigh County District Attorney's Office reported a combined 94% homicide clearance rate for 2024 and 2025.
Green's plea brings a formal end to a case that outlasted two trials, two appeals, and nearly a decade of litigation — a resolution reached far from the courtroom where it first began in February 2020.
