A teenager in Pennsylvania has been charged as an adult with homicide and other crimes after he allegedly confessed on social media to shooting and killing another child, according to the Bensalem Police Department.
On Friday, Nov. 25, the police department received a call about a possible homicide. The caller said that their daughter received a video chat on Instagram from her 16-year-old friend. In the video chat, the 16-year-old said that he had just killed someone and flipped the camera around to show the legs and feet of someone covered in blood. He then asked for help disposing of the dead body, according to a press release from the police department.
The 9-1-1 caller informed police that the teenager lived in a trailer park in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. When officers arrived at the trailer park, the teen ran out of the back of a trailer. He was arrested about a mile away from his home.
Officers who entered his home saw a deceased juvenile female on the floor with a gunshot wound. The police department’s press release mentioned that officers who entered the home noticed “substantial steps” were taken to clean up the crime.
The 16-year-old was charged as an adult for criminal homicide, possessing instruments of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, police said.
Teen, 16, charged with murder after taking to Instagram for help disposing of body https://t.co/Sj7zwAQL1H pic.twitter.com/qsmgusdF5X
— New York Post (@nypost) November 28, 2022
The victim’s identity and age were not released by the police department, other than the fact that she is a juvenile. William McVey, Bensalem’s director of public safety, told the Bucks County Courier Times that the victim was 13, not related to her alleged killer and not a resident of Bensalem.
McVey told the Courier Times that the 13-year-old girl suffered one gunshot wound to the chest and that there was no clear motive for the shooting. The gun was found inside the trailer home.
According to the Courier Times, the alleged killer told his friend on Instagram that the shooting was an “accident.” When he was tracked down by police, he reportedly said it was an accident and that he is “going to jail for the rest of [his] life,” adding that the gun belonged to his father and that he “is going to kill [him].”
The teen was denied bail and sent to the Edison Juvenile Detention Center, police said. One of his neighbors who spoke with Fox 29 said that the situation is “sad” and that the teen “usually stays to himself.”
This week, Fox News reported that crimes committed by juveniles have spiked since the pandemic. And, in many cases, teens are “not deterred” from committing crimes because of the light consequences that have become the “new norm” in many places.
"Unfortunately, the penalties aren't scary for these kids," Joseph Giacalone, an adjunct professor and the former commanding officer of the NYPD’s Bronx Cold Case Squad, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
Giacalone added that parents and schools “aren’t taking care of things” and then “the police have to deal with.”
“They had no [child] rearing at home, no discipline at home and at school, and they want to know why kids are acting out,” he continued.
Other experts who spoke to Fox noted that in Philadelphia, many juvenile offenders arrested for violent crimes had prior arrests for carjacking and other gun-related crimes.