Inquirer.com – Zurich DR

Category: Crime & Justice

  • Montgomery County cop charged with manslaughter for killing a college student who accidentally knocked on the door of the wrong house

    Montgomery County cop charged with manslaughter for killing a college student who accidentally knocked on the door of the wrong house

    An Upper Pottsgrove police officer was charged with manslaughter Tuesday in the fatal shooting of a college student that prosecutors said was unjustified.

    Cpl. Sean Farrell, 58, shot Glenwood Pysher IV on Aug. 23 after Pysher accidentally knocked on the door of the wrong house after a night out drinking with friends. The residents, thinking Pysher was trying to break in, called police, authorities said.

    Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said that Pysher was not a threat, and that Farrell’s use of force was criminal.

    “At the time the fatal shots were fired, Mr. Pysher had his hands up, he had no weapon, he did not charge the officer or act aggressively in any way,” Steele said. “This was not a legal use of force under Pennsylvania law.”

    Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele shows a still image taken from the body-worn camera of Cpl. Sean Farrell. Steele said Farrell was not justified in using lethal force against Glenwood Pysher IV.Vinny Vella / Staff

    Body-camera footage recorded the entire encounter, which Steele said lasted “seconds, not minutes.”

    After the shooting, the DA said, Farrell told a colleague that Pysher acted aggressively, “charged” him, and ignored his commands.

    Steele said the footage contradicts Farrell’s account, and shows Pysher calmly listening to the officer.

    Even if Pysher had been aggressive, Steele said, Farrell could have used the nonlethal weapons he was carrying that night, including a Taser and a baton, rather than reaching for his gun.

    Pysher, 22, affectionately known as “Bubba,” was days away from returning to St. Elizabeth University in North Jersey for his senior year. He had a made a wrong turn while walking to a friend’s house, and didn’t realize he was at a stranger’s door, said his mother, Erin.

    Minutes later, Farrell responded to a 911 call reporting an attempted break-in. After arriving at the home, Farrell identified himself as a police officer and told Pysher to show him his hands and drop to the ground, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

    Pysher raised his hands and walked toward Farrell, who again told him to drop to the ground, the affidavit said. Farrell then yelled “stop or I’ll …” and fired his gun twice before finishing his warning.

    Pysher, who was no more than 20 feet away from Farrell, was struck in his chest and collapsed.

    The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office ruled the death a homicide.

    Farrell, who has served as an officer in Upper Pottsgrove since 2005, has been placed on administrative leave. He is a third-generation police officer, according to an interview he did with the Reading Eagle.

    During an arraignment Tuesday afternoon, District Judge Cathleen Kelly Rebar initially set Farrell’s bail at 10% of $75,000, but decided to keep Farrell in custody until he can surrender his personal firearms.

    His attorney, Michael Gottlieb, told the judge Farrell is “a decorated police officer” who “was out there doing his duty.”

    “He did not have any ill will” toward Pysher, the lawyer said. “He didn’t go there with intent to injure this young gentleman.”

    A lawyer the Pysher family, Ken Fulginiti, meanwhile, said Tuesday they are “grateful for the work of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office and they are looking forward to justice in this horribly tragic, preventable and reckless conduct that took the life of their son.”

    In the days after the shooting, Pysher’s family expressed sadness and outrage and said they wondered why the officer didn’t take steps to de-escalate the situation.

    “It was a senseless loss, and it shouldn’t have happened,” Erin Pysher said in an interview. “I don’t know what the officer was thinking or doing that his first response was to shoot an unarmed kid.

    “This was all a huge mistake, and they killed him.”

  • Police identify the victim of the Times Square fatal stabbing as a 32-year-old Penn grad

    Police identify the victim of the Times Square fatal stabbing as a 32-year-old Penn grad

    Police have identified the victim killed in a knife-wielding spree in Times Square as a 32-year-old from Chester, N.J.

    Erin Piacenti was a vice president of business at Bank of America based out of Manhattan with a background in law, according to her LinkedIn profile. But before that, she was a singer at Penn.

    As a young girl, Piacenti, whose given name was Guiltinan, attended the private Catholic girls’ school in Morristown, N.J., Villa Walsh Academy. She went on to enroll in the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2016, and, later, Fordham University for law school in 2021.

    She had deep roots in New Jersey and made lifelong friends through her involvement in the New Jersey Youth Chorus and later, Penn’s Dischord A Cappella group. A spokesperson for the New Jersey Youth Chorus confirmed Piacenti’s involvement but declined to comment further, citing sensitivity and privacy.

    In Dischord, Piacenti was a frequent soloist with an explosive alto range, taking on renditions of big pop and R&B divas, from Ariana Grande to Tina Turner with confidence. Even when she wasn’t soloing, Piacenti often worked on Dischord’s song arrangements, according to credits from past performances.

    Piacenti recently celebrated her second wedding anniversary. The couple — who both attended Fordham law school — married in Manahawkin, N.J., in 2024. Piacenti’s husband could not immediately be reached for comment.

    “We are shocked and deeply saddened by the tragic loss of our colleague,” Bank of America told The Inquirer in an emailed statement. “She was ​a valued teammate who will ​be greatly missed. Our hearts go out ⁠to her family and all of ​her loved ones.”

    Piacenti was fatally stabbed by Pamela Cisneros of Queens, who reportedly had a documented history of mental health concerns, but no criminal history, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference.

    Cisneros, 49, was caught on a string of now-viral videos waving around two large knives. Police fatally shot her Monday in the middle of Times Square after they said she injured two people at random: a 68-year-old man exiting the subway and, about 20 seconds later, Piacenti.

    Piacenti was rushed to the hospital with a puncture to her abdomen and was pronounced dead, according to Tisch. The male victim, who has not been publicly named, was separately hospitalized and is recovering, according to police.

    Tisch said that police attempted to negotiate with Cisneros, who held the knives toward officers for “four minutes,” but that she remained hostile and threatened to kill them instead. Responding officers deployed Tasers, but she advanced anyway, police said. Two officers opened fire at Cisneros, who was taken to the hospital where she died.

    Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance, which represents the area’s businesses, said the stabbings were a “tragedy.”

    “Our hearts go out to the victims and their families at this time,” Harris told the New York Times. “We are thankful that once again the NYPD was swift to act and put themselves in harm’s way to stop the perpetrator before more were injured.”

  • Man and woman charged with murder in shooting on I-95 that killed a 21-year-old bystander

    Man and woman charged with murder in shooting on I-95 that killed a 21-year-old bystander

    Aiden Zeallor was only trying to get home the night he was struck and killed by gunfire while driving on I-95 near Port Richmond last year.

    Zeallor, 21, was a bystander, in the wrong place at the wrong time when at least 50 rounds were fired at a nearby vehicle in what investigators said was an attempted targeted killing of another person.

    Now, nearly 18 months after the Levittown native’s death, police have arrested a man and woman they say are responsible.

    Alondra M. Lopez, 28, and Joseph G. Toledo-Gonzalez, 27, face charges of murder, attempted murder, and related crimes in connection with the 2025 shooting.

    Lopez is being held in the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center and Toledo-Gonzalez is being held in the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. Both were denied bail.

    Zeallor’s mother, Denise Donahue, said the arrests have given her some semblance of closure, even if no development in the case will bring back her son.

    “He was a loving boy that should still be here,” Donahue said. “His life was stolen from him.”

    The curly-haired young man was an avid fisherman and outdoor enthusiast who worked as a technician for his family’s HVAC company and was always surrounded by friends, Donahue said.

    He was also devoted to his family, she said. Not long before Zeallor’s death, he had moved into his grandmother’s house in Northeast Philadelphia to take care of her and so she did not have to live alone.

    Donahue, meanwhile, continues to grieve the loss of her son. She had already experienced the death of Zeallor’s father, in 2009.

    Her life was again forever altered the evening of March 29, 2025, when she learned her son had been shot in the head and torso and was put on life support.

    A photo of Aiden Zeallor.Denise Donahue

    She rushed to the hospital from her home in Wildwood. Zeallor was declared brain-dead and died later that morning.

    Donahue said her son had been out dancing with a friend that evening at a nightclub in Philadelphia.

    The two were heading back to Zeallor’s grandmother’s house and were in the northbound lane of I-95 around 2:30 a.m. in Zeallor’s Ford Mustang when bullets fired from a semiautomatic rifle riddled a nearby Acura, the intended target of the shooting.

    Two stray bullets pierced Zeallor’s windshield as he drove, striking his right eye and under his right arm.

    The driver of the Acura was shot in the leg and was treated at a nearby hospital.

    Court documents offered few details about Lopez and Toledo-Gonzalez’s role in the shooting and do not describe the motive.

    A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Police, which is handling the investigation, did not immediately return a request for comment.

    A preliminary hearing for both defendants is scheduled for Sept. 14 in Municipal Court.

    Donahue said she and relatives plan to attend every court proceeding as they seek justice for Zeallor.

    They are also urging lawmakers to pass “Aiden’s Law,” which would require the installation of surveillance cameras on certain Pennsylvania highways to help investigators identify suspects in violent crimes.

    Meanwhile, the family is comforted knowing that Zeallor helped save four lives through organ donation.

    “We changed other people’s lives that day,” Donahue said. “That makes me proud, as Aiden’s mom.”

  • DA Larry Krasner will not be called to testify about a case that has roiled his office

    DA Larry Krasner will not be called to testify about a case that has roiled his office

    A federal judge said Tuesday that he will not call Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to testify about his actions in a controversial post-conviction case — despite the fact that some of Krasner’s own staffers have accused him of overseeing the matter in ways they viewed as inappropriate.

    The decision by U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond came at the end of a multiday hearing at which two of Krasner’s prosecutors testified about the discord that emerged among lawyers in the office as they worked to determine whether a man’s murder conviction should be overturned.

    Both prosecutors who testified Tuesday, David Napiorski and Peter Andrews, largely echoed assertions two of their colleagues made on previous days of the hearing — including that Krasner vehemently opposed referring the case to the state attorney general’s office, and that he threatened unspecified “consequences” for those who didn’t follow his orders.

    In earlier testimony, other staffers accused Krasner of calling state prosecutors “Nazis” and growing “apoplectic” when they memorialized their disagreements with him in writing. Diamond last week also suggested that some actions in the case could amount to crimes including perjury, conspiracy, or obstruction of justice.

    Napiorski and Andrews continued to paint a portrait of an office consumed by internal conflicts over its actions in the matter. And they accused Krasner of sometimes amplifying the drama.

    Despite that, Diamond said at the conclusion of the hearing that he did not intend to hear from any other witnesses, including Krasner. Instead, Diamond said, his next step would be to determine whether Krasner’s office should be allowed to continue participating in the case moving forward. He did not specify how quickly that ruling might come.

    Krasner declined to comment Tuesday. He has previously declined to talk about the matter, saying it would violate ethical rules to do so while it remains pending.

    The underlying case is the conviction of Dennis Johnson, who was found guilty of second-degree murder in 2009 for fatally shooting Kenyatta Smith outside a North Philadelphia convenience store.

    Johnson appealed his conviction, in part because he said his trial attorney was ineffective. And in 2022, a newly hired prosecutor in Krasner’s law division, Jaclyn Mason, filed court documents agreeing with him and saying his conviction should be overturned.

    But this spring, some of Mason’s colleagues began reviewing the case and took the opposite view — in part because they said she’d made clear and important mistakes in her brief supporting Johnson’s position.

    That set off a sequence of events that has gone on to roil Krasner’s office.

    First, Mason’s supervisors said they had to withdraw her brief and apologize to Diamond for her mistakes — an unusual step for lawyers to take in court.

    And although they said they offered Mason a chance to join that effort, she resigned instead, saying she’d only filed her brief because her boss, Matthew Stiegler, had pressured her to do so, and that she didn’t want to be used as a scapegoat for the office.

    In the weeks that followed, prosecutors testified, Krasner became involved in a series of disputes with those who remained on the case, including Napiorski, Andrews, and two of their colleagues: Katherine Ernst and Steven Wildberger.

    All four went on to testify that they believed their office should recuse itself from handling Johnson’s case because their internal discussions had veered into areas of self-preservation rather than the merits of Johnson’s claims.

    But Krasner disagreed, they said, at times angrily. He said he would not refer the case to the attorney general’s office because he viewed their staffers as “Nazis,” according to Ernst and Wildberger. And they and Napiorski said Krasner also wanted to keep the case in-house to “protect the office.”

    By mid-July — about six weeks after Mason resigned — Ernst, Wildberger, Napiorski, and Andrews filed documents with Diamond saying they could no longer participate in the case due to the behind-the-scenes drama.

    Krasner, in a court document of his own, called their assertions unauthorized and “ill-informed.”

    As Diamond weighs how to sort out the turmoil, Roy Clark, Johnson’s father, said he’s become demoralized by how attention has shifted away from whether or not his son should be released from prison.

    “With all the in-house fighting and stuff for the DA’s Office, it takes the human component out of the case,” he said outside the courthouse Tuesday. “We’re trying to get my boy home.”

    Staff writer Jesse Bunch contributed to this article.

  • William Dunbar, a key adviser for Mayor Cherelle Parker’s 2023 campaign, pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges

    William Dunbar, a key adviser for Mayor Cherelle Parker’s 2023 campaign, pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges

    William F. Dunbar Sr., a Philadelphia lobbyist who was an important unpaid adviser to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s 2023 campaign, on Monday pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges related to a tax fraud scheme that lasted six years.

    Dunbar’s lawyer, Brian McMonagle, said Dunbar “accepts full responsibility for his conduct.” The charges were filed in July but were under seal until Monday morning. Dunbar entered his plea on Monday afternoon before District Court Judge Kelley B. Hodge.

    Dunbar, 42, was charged with four counts including tax evasion and filing a false tax return. He was charged by information, a process used when a defendant intends to plead guilty.

    Federal investigators subpoenaed records about Philly lobbyist William Dunbar, who was key to Mayor Parker’s campaign, sources say

    “Today’s plea reflects his commitment to resolving this matter with honesty, accountability, and respect for the judicial process,” McMonagle said. “He has taken decisive steps to satisfy his outstanding tax obligations and has implemented appropriate financial controls and professional oversight to help ensure this does not recur.”

    McMonagle added that Dunbar “has dedicated his professional and personal life to serving his community through public service, civic leadership, and charitable engagement.”

    A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case Monday.

    The charges carry a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison, plus supervised release and fines. A sentencing hearing was scheduled for Jan. 11, and Dunbar was released on bail pending sentencing.

    Dunbar pleaded guilty to filing fraudulent income tax returns for himself and his wife from 2020 through 2025. Prosecutors say Dunbar inflated his charitable giving and business expenses while dramatically undervaluing his taxable income, a scheme that likely would have lowered the couple’s tax bill.

    For example, they said, in the 2024 tax year, Dunbar claimed $1.45 million in total business expenses while indicating he had no taxable income. Dunbar also reported that he owed $46,000 in total taxes for that year, a sum that can include other taxes outside the income tax, but prosecutors said the amount he actually owed was “materially greater” than what he reported on his tax form.

    Prosecutors did not specify how much money Dunbar owed the government in taxes, but said in court papers that it was between $350,000 and $750,000.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis D. Lappen told Hodge that, due to the fraudulent returns, Dunbar for tax year 2023 received a refund of about $30,000 while his spouse received a refund of about $36,000. Lappen said the couple claimed similar refund sums each year from 2020 through 2025, and that they should have paid additional taxes when they filed their returns instead of receiving refunds.

    “Had the taxes been filed accurately and appropriately and without fraud, [Dunbar and his spouse] would have owed,” Lappen said.

    Although prosecutors accused Dunbar of inflating expenses associated with his political consulting firm, Dunbar Public Affairs & Associates, there are no accusations in his charging documents that connect his conduct with Parker or others affiliated with her campaign.

    Dunbar was a key member of Parker’s “kitchen cabinet” of informal advisers during her 2023 run, in which she bested a crowded field to win the Democratic primary and become the city’s first female mayor. Dunbar also has had ties to other high-profile Democratic politicians, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and members of Philadelphia City Council.

    The Inquirer reported earlier this month that federal investigators last summer issued subpoenas for documents and financial records related to Dunbar, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the probe.

    One of the sources said the investigation appeared to be a “fairly broad” review of Dunbar.

    Parker’s campaign has dramatically increased its spending on legal services since early 2025, around the time the sources said subpoenas were issued, according to campaign finance reports.

    The campaign paid its law firm, Dilworth Paxson, about $108,000 since the start of 2025, The Inquirer reported. By comparison, it paid the firm less than $15,000 during the 2023 election year and about $19,000 in 2024.

    Parker last week declined to comment on the subpoenas related to Dunbar or on her campaign’s increased legal spending.

    Spokespeople for the mayor’s office and for Parker’s campaign declined to comment on the charges against Dunbar on Monday.

    Dunbar was never paid for his role in the campaign during the 2023 mayoral election.

    In 2024, Parker’s first year in office, Dunbar took over management of the campaign. The campaign paid Dunbar’s firm a series of rent payments totaling $22,850 between March 2024 and November 2024.

    Parker let Dunbar go from her campaign in the summer of 2024 in a move that Dunbar said at the time was the mayor’s decision. The campaign is now managed by Aren Platt, who was one of the architects of Parker’s 2023 run and served as chief deputy mayor in her administration before resigning in October 2024.

    Meet the people in Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker’s ‘kitchen cabinet’

    Dunbar appears to still be active in politics despite no longer being on Parker’s team. Two weeks ago, he posted on social media a series of behind-the-scenes photos from a filming session at a West Philadelphia barbershop for a Shapiro campaign advertisement, writing: “Where politics meets the people.”

    Manuel Bonder, a spokesperson for Shapiro’s reelection campaign, said in a statement that Dunbar has “no formal or informal role with the Shapiro for Pennsylvania campaign.”

    Dunbar’s lobbying clients include Comcast, the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia, and Jackmont Hospitality, an airport concessions company, according to his lobbying registration with the city.

    Dunbar previously lobbied for the Philadelphia School District, but a district spokesperson said earlier this month that he stopped working for the district in June.

    Staff writers Abraham Gutman and Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.

  • Man charged in 2000 rape and murder of 5-year-old girl returned to Philadelphia from Honduras to stand trial

    Man charged in 2000 rape and murder of 5-year-old girl returned to Philadelphia from Honduras to stand trial

    A longtime fugitive charged in the rape and murder of a 5-year-old girl in North Philadelphia more than two decades ago has been extradited to the city from Central America, authorities said Monday.

    Alexis Flores, 51, was arrested earlier this year in Lapaera, Honduras, in connection with the death of Iriana DeJesus in 2000.

    He is now in Philadelphia and has been charged with murder, rape, kidnapping, and related crimes, according to law enforcement officials.

    “The return of Alexis Flores to Philadelphia demonstrates our unwavering commitment to pursuing fugitives wherever they may run, no matter how much time has passed,” said Wayne A. Jacobs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office.

    Iriana’s killing rocked the city’s Hunting Park neighborhood, and in 2007 — when federal investigators identified Flores as the suspect — he was placed an the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list.

    The child was reported missing near her home on the 3900 block of North Fairhill Street on July 29, 2000. She was last seen walking with a stranger around 9 p.m., witnesses told police.

    Within days, a store owner found the girl’s body in a vacant second-floor apartment above a nearby small business at West Pike and North Sixth Streets.

    She had been raped and strangled. Her body, left in a corner facing the wall, was decomposing and had been partially concealed by a trash bag.

    Investigators soon suspected the attacker was a “drifter” in his 20s who had been doing handyman work on the property. They said the man mistakenly ended up panhandling in Philadelphia after traveling from Arizona on a boxcar that he thought was headed to Chicago.

    Iyanna Vazques (right) records a balloon release in memory of her sister Iriana DeJesus on Feb. 15. Five year-old Iriana was kidnapped and killed in 2000. Alexis Flores was arrested after two decades on the FBI’s most-wanted list.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

    A breakthrough in the case came in 2007 when Flores’ DNA — collected during an arrest on unrelated forgery charges in Arizona several years earlier — came up in a database as a match for genetic material taken from the scene of Iriana’s slaying.

    But law enforcement officials could not find him for years.

    Flores had entered the U.S. without official permission and was deported to his homeland of Honduras in 2005 after his Arizona arrest.

    It took until February of this year for federal law enforcement to track him down and arrest him in connection with the Philadelphia case. When word of his arrest reached Iriana’s family, her mother and around 100 neighbors in Hunting Park gathered on the block to release balloons in memory of the child, affectionately known as “Nena.”

    The effort to bring Flores to the U.S. to face charges of murder and related crimes was led by the FBI’s Transnational Anti-Gang Task Force and aided by Honduran authorities, officials said.

  • 2 women found dead in Ogontz neighborhood in an apparent murder-suicide, police say

    2 women found dead in Ogontz neighborhood in an apparent murder-suicide, police say

    Police said two women were found dead inside a home on the 1600 block of Conlyn Street in the Ogontz neighborhood on Sunday afternoon in what is being investigated as a murder-suicide.

    Police did not release the identities of the women.

    Officers responded to the scene around 1:50 p.m., after a gunshot was heard from inside the home, police said. A “barricade” was declared and ended about an hour later, police said.

    Two adult women were found inside the home and pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

    Police said preliminary information indicated that it was a murder-suicide. The relationship between the women has not been established and the motive was unknown. An investigation is ongoing, police said.

  • The Delaware psychiatrist who testified in the Lindsay Clancy case has resigned from Nemours, the health system said

    The Delaware psychiatrist who testified in the Lindsay Clancy case has resigned from Nemours, the health system said

    A psychiatrist with Nemours Children’s Health in Delaware resigned his position after he began testifying in the nationally watched murder trial of Lindsay Clancy in Massachusetts, the health system said in a statement Friday.

    Avram Mack testified on Friday, Aug. 21, and Monday, Aug. 24, as a prosecution rebuttal witness in the case against Clancy, 36, whose lawyers have argued was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed her three young children in 2023.

    “Dr. Avram Mack is no longer employed by Nemours Children’s Health, he resigned on Monday, August 24th,” Shelley Meadowcroft, a Nemours spokesperson, said in an email.

    Meadowcroft declined to comment further on “confidential personnel matters.”

    Mack could not be reached for comment Friday.

    CT Insider, which is covering the trial, reported that Mack’s resumé submitted during the trial listed him as a psychiatrist at Nemours Children’s Health since 2023.

    Mack testified that he interviewed Clancy before the trial and did not notice any episodes that he would diagnose as bipolar, the Connecticut-based news site reported.

    Mack also testified that Clancy having some odd thoughts, including fear that someone would take her children, was normal, CT Insider reported.

    Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s defense attorney, reportedly sparred with Mack over the doctor’s experience working with adults, the definition of “postpartum,” and technical questions related to postpartum depression and psychosis.

  • A Philly man was convicted of murder for shooting his pregnant girlfriend 11 times in the head, then fleeing the city

    A Philly man was convicted of murder for shooting his pregnant girlfriend 11 times in the head, then fleeing the city

    Justin Smith was grasping for the gun that his pregnant girlfriend had pressed to her temple, he told a Philadelphia jury last week, when the weapon accidentally went off, firing 12 shots in a matter of seconds — 11 of them into her head.

    Smith, 28, took the stand at his trial on murder and related charges in the death of Dianna Brice, 21, in Southwest Philadelphia and said the shooting was an accident.

    But a jury rejected Smith’s account and convicted him of first- and third-degree murder on Friday in the 2021 death of Brice and her unborn child. Smith was also convicted of abuse of a corpse, arson, and related crimes after he admitted to committing those acts to cover up the killing.

    Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony Kyriakakis sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    During closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Lauren Crump cast doubt on Smith’s explanation of how his girlfriend died, saying it was impossible for that many shots to have fired into a concentrated area if the gun accidentally went off during a struggle over the weapon, as he suggested.

    She pointed to other problems with Smith’s defense, urging jurors to reject his contention that the Glock handgun modified with a semiautomatic “switch” was Brice’s, not his.

    And she dismissed Smith’s argument that he covered up the crime and fled Pennsylvania after the killing because he was scared, bidding jurors to recall his swift actions — setting his car on fire and disposing of Brice’s body in trash bags — before heading to Florida in an attempt to reach Cuba.

    “That is not panic,” Crump said. “That is premeditation.”

    Brice, 21, of Upper Darby, was 14 weeks pregnant with Smith’s child when she died on March 30, 2021, Lindsay Simon, chief medical examiner for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office, testified during the trial.

    Prosecutors said she was last seen with Smith that day driving from a Delaware County laundromat to Philadelphia, where the couple got into a volatile argument after Brice learned she had tested positive for herpes and accused her boyfriend of giving her the sexually transmitted infection.

    It was the last time Brice was seen alive.

    Police discovered her body seven days later in a wooded area near 58th Street and Eastwick Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, covered in black trash bags and wrapped in a tan blanket.

    She had been shot in the head 11 times at close range and struck once in her right shoulder. Simon, the medical examiner, said the shots would have almost certainly killed Brice instantaneously.

    Philadelphia police quickly identified Smith as a suspect: Cell phone records from the day Brice died showed her phone traveling the same path as Smith’s phone — until 1:38 p.m., when the phone’s trail went dark, said Anthony Vega, a former Philadelphia police detective who testified at the trial as a cell site expert.

    Police also found Smith’s dark gray Ford Fusion, burned to a blackened shell, near 59th Street and Florence Avenue, about a mile from where Brice’s body was discovered.

    Investigators traced the vehicle to Brice’s makeshift grave site, and to where it was found burned, using video footage from street surveillance cameras, Philadelphia Detective Thorsten Lucke testified.

    But the cameras did more than capture the Fusion’s path: It also showed Smith and an accomplice, Tylydia Garnett, wearing gloves and loading what appeared to be a large object into the back of a Hyundai, which police traced to the same locations and to a gas station where its driver purchased a canister of fuel used to set the Fusion ablaze, prosecutors said.

    While detectives soon suspected Smith was involved, he was not arrested until 2025, when Atlanta police took him into custody after he gave an officer a fake name during a routine traffic stop and fled.

    Meanwhile, Philadelphia police arrested his accomplice, Garnett, in April 2021. She pleaded guilty to arson, abuse of a corpse, and related crimes, and was sentenced to 11½ to 23 months.

    Last week, Garnett, 27, told jurors at Smith’s murder trial that he had confessed to her that he shot Brice.

    She testified that she had helped him flee to Florida before he moved to Georgia, though Smith’s attorney, Samuel Stretton, suggested the woman had inflated details of her story to earn a more lenient sentence.

    When Smith testified, he told jurors Brice’s death was a tragic, shocking accident.

    During their argument in the car, he said, the exchange escalated as he drove. He denied cheating on her, he said, but Brice became agitated and held a gun to his head before turning the weapon on herself.

    “I tried to hurry up and pull it from her,” he testified. Instead, he said, “it went off, and she died.”

    In fear for what might happen to him, Smith said, he hatched a plot to dispose of her body and burn the car with the gun still inside it. The gun was never found, prosecutors said.

    “Why didn’t you come to your senses and call for help?” Stretton, his attorney, asked.

    “I just felt like this wasn’t going to go my way,” Smith said.

    Following the jury’s verdict, Brice’s family, who had lined three rows of the courtroom during the three-day trial, expressed relief for the guilty verdict.

  • Paulsboro man gets 3 decades in prison for sex assault of young teen

    Paulsboro man gets 3 decades in prison for sex assault of young teen

    A 48-year-old Paulsboro man was sentenced Friday to more than three decades in state prison for sexually assaulting an underage teen girl in 2023, the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office said.

    After an eight-day trial, a state jury in April found Jason L. Bailey guilty of first-degree aggravated sexual assault, second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, third-degree aggravated criminal sexual contact, and fourth-degree refusal to provide a DNA sample.

    Prosecutors said Bailey in December 2023 sexually assaulted a girl between the ages of 13 and 16. When Bailey was arrested, he refused to provide a mandatory DNA sample, prosecutors said.

    The jury also decided that Bailey was a persistent offender, based on his criminal history.

    Bailey must serve 85% of his 30-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault, prosecutors said.

    He also was sentenced to an additional 18 months for refusing to submit a DNA sample.

    In April, prosecutors said Bailey faced a maximum life sentence. If he were eligible for release, he would be required to register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law and be subject to parole supervision for life.

    Bailey’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.