Bensalem Teen Confesses to Killing Girl Over Instagram, Police Say

Bensalem Teen Confesses to Killing Girl Over Instagram, Police Say

Police officers found a girl shot dead in Bensalem after her alleged 16-year-old killer confessed to the crime over an Instagram video chat, police say.

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 the 1400 block of 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.

During an interview after he was captured, the boy told detectives that he got the gun while cleaning 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.

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 teen is charged as an adult with criminal homicide, possessing instruments of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. He was denied bail and sent to the Edison Juvenile Detention Center.