A teenager from Bensalem, Pennsylvania, has been charged with homicide after police say he shot and killed a 13-year-old girl he previously had a relationship with, then used an Instagram video call to ask for help covering up the crime.
The accused murderer, a boy, sent a video chat Friday afternoon to a teenage acquaintance in which he said he’d accidentally killed somebody before flipping the video and showing the legs and feet of someone covered in blood, the Bensalem Township Police Department said.
A criminal complaint said police officers learned of the crime after a mother called them around 4:11 p.m. Friday to tell them that the 16-year-old had not only sent the Instagram video to her daughter, but also repeatedly texted her, pleading for her help to dispose of the body.
Officers tracked the boy down to his home on Gibson Road, at which point he ran out the back and into the woods, according to the complaint. The officers then entered the home and found the victim dead from a gunshot wound to the back/neck area.
Get Philly local news, weather forecasts, sports and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Philadelphia newsletters.
The boy was found by officers on a nearby wooded path, at which time he told them he was "sorry" and that he's "going to jail for the rest of [his] life."
During an interview after he was captured, the boy told detectives that he got the gun while cleaning and organizing his father’s safe. The teen accessed the safe while replacing the batteries that his dad had removed, making the safe’s combination lock inoperable, according to the criminal complaint.
The boy allegedly told police that he and the victim, who arrived at his home after he’d finished cleaning the safe, had been in a relationship in the past. The two watched Netflix for a while, after which the girl went up to go to the bathroom, where she was later found dead.
Local
Breaking news and the stories that matter to your neighborhood.
The evidence “indicated that substantial steps had been taken to clean up the crime scene, including the cleaning of a large amount of blood,” the police complaint said.
The boy told police that although he would normally escort the victim to the bathroom, he didn't this time. Then, the teen's mom cut off the interview, the complaint says.
Police have not released a motive for the crime, or how they believe the victim and suspect originally met.
NBC10's Deanna Durante learned Monday that the 13-year-old girl lived with relatives in Jenkintown, and it was one of those relatives who dropped her off at the Bensalem trailer home on Friday. The victim was a seventh-grader who had only been enrolled in a Montgomery County school district one day before she died, sources said.
Bensalem school officials said the 16-year-old suspect attended a cyber charter program and was not physically inside school buildings. Neighbor Charlie Petri said the boy didn't work, as medications he was prescribed kept him from having a job.
Since the boy and his father moved in about a few months ago, neighbors said they'd see him quietly walking around fairly often.
"I talked to the boy out here on the bench a couple times 'cause he seemed troubled," Petri said. He added he had seen the boy and his dad openly carrying guns in their backyard, so when Petri heard the gunshot and saw the boy running, he wasn't too alarmed.
"I didn't think much about that, at that time, because that's not the first time since he's lived here that he's done that," Petri said.
The teen is charged as an adult with criminal homicide, possessing instruments of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. The case could be sent to a juvenile court if a judge agrees. For now, he was denied bail and sent to the Edison Juvenile Detention Center.
