Neighbors in a quiet Bensalem, Pennsylvania community are horrified after a deadly shooting in their neighborhood. Police say the suspected killer, a teenager, used social media to ask someone for help with disposing of the victim’s body.
Families living at Top of the Ridge Trailer Park say they’re stunned after police say they found the body of a young girl inside one of their neighbor’s mobile homes on Friday at around 4 p.m.
“Just chaos, really,” Katlynn, a Top of the Ridge five-year resident, said. “A lot of cars, a lot of cops. You couldn’t really see too much, thankfully because I didn’t want my kids to see anything.”
“I have seen the police in and out over the 30 something years, but it’s not like an every day occurrence,” Charlie Petree, who has lived at Top of the Ridge for 35 years, said.
Bensalem Township Police say they checked on a mobile home after getting a call from a mother whose daughter got an Instagram video chat of someone saying they had just killed a person and needed help disposing of the body.
The video also showed legs and feet covered in blood.
“I’ve lived in Bensalem on-and-off my whole life and I think that’s the first time I’ve ever really seen the crime scene unit truck out like that, so it’s really rare,” Katlynn said.
Police later identified the suspect as 16-year-old Joshua Cooper.
Once they got inside the home, police found a dead girl whose age they have not released. She had an apparent gunshot wound.
“I heard a gunshot and I know about gunshots,” Petree said. “And I come out and open the door and I see the boy run across there.”
Police say once they arrived to the trailer, Cooper ran out of the back of it. They eventually caught up with him in the area of Newport Mews and Groton Drives. Police then took him into custody.
Police say they found evidence that steps were taken to clean up the crime scene.
Next door neighbor Petree says Cooper and his father moved in about six months ago.
“I talked to the boy out here on the bench a couple of times and he seemed troubled,” Petree said.
Police have not said anything about a motive.
Police have charged Cooper as an adult with criminal homicide, possessing instruments of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.
He was denied bail and was sent to a juvenile detention center.
Tell us your thoughts...