What to Know
- The trial began Monday for Julie Jean and Zakkee Steven Alhakim who face first-degree murder charges in the ambush killing of Rachel King as she sat in her car outside a Cheltenham Township Dunkin' on April 11, 2023.
- The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office alleges that Jean and Alhakim spent weeks planning the ambush killing, which took place in front of King's 11-year-old son.
- DA Kevin Steele said Jean was jealous of King, who was dating a man Jean previously had an affair with.
The trial began Monday for a man and woman charged in the murder-for-hire ambush killing of a Philadelphia teacher that prosecutors say was fueled by jealousy.
On April 26, 2023, Zakkee Steven Alhakim, 34, and Julie Jean, 35, were both charged in the deadly shooting of Rachel King, 35, in front of her 11-year-old son at a Dunkin' drive-thru in Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, back on April 11, 2023.
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Police believe Alhakim was the gunman and Jean was the mastermind of the ambush, which took about two months to plan. Prosecutors say it was part of a murder-for-hire plot.
The murder of Rachel King
Rachel King and her son, Jalen, were sitting inside her Ford Edge in the drive-thru of the Dunkin’ at the Melrose Shopping Center on Cheltenham Avenue in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, on the morning of April 11, 2023, when someone opened fire.
Family members said King was taking her son to a violin lesson before school. They stopped at the drive-thru of a Cheltenham Township Dunkin' along the way.
As they sat, a light-colored sedan drove directly behind King’s vehicle and parked a short distance away from the drive-thru lane. A man then exited the vehicle, walked up to the driver’s side of King’s SUV, pulled out a gun and opened fire, shooting her multiple times, according to investigators. The gunman then went back into his vehicle and fled the scene eastbound on Cheltenham Avenue, police said.
King died from her injuries. Her son, who was sitting in the backseat, was not physically injured, but witnessed his mother’s murder.
"He's carrying a picture of my sister around. Won't let it go," Allen King III, the boy’s uncle and victim’s brother, told NBC10 in the days after the killing. "I believe the picture might tear. That'll be an issue."
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said the gunman never tried to open the door of King’s vehicle nor did he appear to speak with her prior to the shooting. Police recovered six fired bullet casings outside King's car.
“This appears to be a targeted murder of a mother,” Steele said in the hours after the shooting.
Alleged motive behind the murder
Steele said that King's longtime boyfriend had an affair with Jean in 2022, but later broke it off and reconciled with King. Jean continued to harass both King and the man by text messages and calls, prompting the man to get a protection from abuse order against Jean, Steele said.
Alhakim is a cousin of the father of three of Jean's children. In February, 2023, cellphone records show that Jean added Alhakim's phone number under "Zah."
Police said Alhakim, who's from Philadelphia, and Jean, who's from Elkins Park, had mapped out the murder and shared a photo of the victim in the days leading up to the killing.
A search into the suspects' cellphones showed that contact between the two had been deleted. Jean deleted 787 texts just 13 minutes before detectives interviewed her on April 12, 2023, the DA's office said.
"Many of those communications were able to be recovered by law enforcement, including the last message that Jean sent to Alhakim, which was sent through CashApp at 12:11 p.m. on the day of the murder, April 11, It was a payment of $5, with the emoji message that is interpreted to mean 'link up, message me, no phones, that’s it,'" the DA's office said in a news release.
Further investigation showed Jean and Alhakim had purchased the Mercury Sable used as the getaway car in Philadelphia on March 30, 2023, under Jean's name, authorities said. A criminal complaint said the car was purchased for $1,500.
Alhakim is charged with first-degree murder.
A criminal complaint stated that Alhakim told investigators he was homeless for several months before the killing and selling drugs for money. He denied being in Cheltenham on the day of the murder however and said a friend known to him as "Tizzy" had borrowed his car the night before and returned it in the Kensington neighborhood on April 11, 2023, Detectives found conflicting evidence of the suspect's claims.
Video and cellphone records show the silver Sable sedan following King's car to the drive-thru on April 11, 2023, investigators said. Alhakim then parked nearby before exiting his car and firing into King's Ford, police said.
Later on April 11, Philadelphia police on patrol spotted the silver Mercury Sable, which was also connected to an April 7, 2023, killing along North Broad Street in Philadelphia's Logan section. That April 7 shooting left a man in his 30s dead.
As police tried to stop the driver, he fled at a high rate of speed before crashing into a fence along 16th Street, Steele said.
Alhakim has remained jailed in Philadelphia since that night, Steele said. Police found fired bullet casings in his car.
Montgomery County entered those spent shell casings and the ones recovered at King's murder scene into the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), Steele said. That search showed that the bullets appeared to have come from a privately-built "ghost gun." Police later found a March 16, 2023, photo of a "ghost gun" on his cellphone.
Jean was arrested and later arraigned on first-degree murder and related counts and held without bail, according to court records.
In the days after the shooting, a judge granted King’s family emergency custody of her son.
“The saddest part about this is [Jalen’s] biological father was supposed to take him to violin that morning and every Tuesday morning,” King III said. “You can’t help but think that if that was the case, none of this would’ve happened.”
King III said he and his sister were 2 ½ years apart and described her as his best friend and the loudest and brightest person he knew.
"She didn't deserve that. No one deserves that. My nephew didn't deserve that. My family doesn't deserve that," he said.
Students of King react to her murder
King was a beloved teacher at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in Philadelphia’s Tioga-Nicetown neighborhood. She had plans of becoming a principal and starting her own curriculum consulting business.
“She was my history teacher,” Saleem Garay, an 8th-grade student at Grover Cleveland, told NBC10. “She was my favorite teacher. She meant a lot to me.”
King III created a memorial fund for his sister.
“My sister was good. And this isn’t because she was my sister,” he said. “If you looked at the definition of good and had a check box, she would check those boxes.”
Parents face their daughter's alleged killers
During a preliminary hearing in August, 2023, King’s parents were face to face with Alhakim and Jean.
“I wanted to be able to hate the defendants. And in seeing them I don’t hate them. However, justice will prevail.” King’s father, Rev. Allen King, said.
Reverend King and his wife sat through hours of testimony during the preliminary hearing and often looked directly at the two people accused of killing their daughter.
“And anyone that knew my daughter loved my daughter,” he said. “Clearly the defendants did not know my daughter.”
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