Seven minutes. That was all the time Springfield Township police needed Monday to solve the area’s first murder in five years.
Someone called police around 11 a.m. saying they'd seen a stabbing outside the Famous Footwear store on Baltimore Pike.
Two Delaware County detectives, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time, spotted the alleged killer driving a Jeep Cherokee down Baltimore Pike.
Police then pulled over the vehicle driven by 42-year-old Sean Burton, according to Springfield Township Police. Detectives not only apprehended the suspect, they also found a knife and a dead body.
"There was a corpse in the car beside him," Springfield Police Chief Joseph Daly told the Philadelphia Daily News.
The corpse has been identified as James Stropus, 32.
Investigators are trying to determine the nature of the relationship between the two men as well as the motive for the slaying.
"We believe there’s a link between the victim and the suspect, but we’re not sure what that link is right now," Daly said. "We believe this was isolated. It wasn’t a carjacking, it wasn’t a robbery gone bad, it was none of those things.”
Burton, the owner of Final Impact in Morton, has been charged with robbery and murder, according to police.
