The parents of one of two teenagers charged with killing a Pennsylvania State University student in June drove him from Philadelphia to Colorado Springs, Colo., within hours of local television stations airing surveillance footage of the suspects police were seeking in the case, prosecutors said Thursday.
Kaiseem Smith, 16, and Azzubair Outen-Fleming, 16, are charged with murder, conspiracy, and related offenses in the shooting death of William “Billy” Schmidt, 22, who was killed June 6 after a robbery on a South Philadelphia sidewalk turned deadly.
Philadelphia police and the U.S. Marshals Service searched for Smith and Outen-Fleming for weeks before taking them into custody. Marshals found Outen-Fleming on July 1 in Colorado Springs. Smith surrendered to Philadelphia police the following day.
At a preliminary hearing Thursday, prosecutors detailed how Outen-Fleming’s stepfather, Donte Abdulmalik, 35, and mother, Milika Abdulmalik, 45, allegedly drove him more than 1,700 miles to Colorado Springs — a roughly 45-hour trip spanning several states — and how police detectives traced the journey through cell phone records and license plate reader data.
Donte Abdulmalik was arrested June 30 and Milika Abdulmalik on July 3. Both are charged with hindering apprehension, obstruction of justice, and related offenses.
After hearing the evidence Thursday, Common Pleas Court Judge Gregory Yorgey-Girdy ordered the parents to stand trial.
Detective Thorsten Lucke testified that the couple’s cell phone records showed they began the drive around 10:30 p.m. June 10, after surveillance videos and images of the suspects aired during local 10 p.m. newscasts.
That night, a phone registered to Milika Abdulmalik called and texted a Colorado Springs number, Lucke said, before beginning to travel west in tandem with a phone registered to Donte Abdulmalik.
The phones arrived in Colorado Springs on the evening of June 12, Lucke testified, and began heading east again June 14 before returning to Philadelphia.
Detective Frank Mullen, who also testified Thursday, said police arrested Donte Abdulmalik near a black Mercedes-Benz that investigators believe was used to drive Outen-Fleming to Colorado Springs. License plate readers captured the vehicle near the home where Outen-Fleming was later found, Lucke said.
Defense attorneys for the parents argued, however, that the evidence was thin and failed to connect their clients to the alleged crimes.
Donte Abdulmalik’s attorney, Carmen C. Nasuti III, made plain what he thought of the case during a cross-examination of Lucke: “So, essentially, what you showed us was two phones took a trip to Colorado Springs?” Nasuti asked.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Lucke replied.
Smith, Outen-Fleming, and Fleming also appeared in court Thursday but waived their preliminary hearings.
Schmidt, a Penn State senior, was walking home from a neighborhood bar where he had watched the NBA Finals when the two teenagers approached him near 20th and Wolf Streets around 1:30 a.m., according to prosecutors and surveillance footage described in court records.
Prosecutors have said Outen-Fleming grabbed Schmidt’s cell phone, punched him, and rifled through his pockets before the pair knocked him to the ground. As the teens walked away, Outen-Fleming threw the phone down the block.
A neighbor’s surveillance camera recorded Schmidt running after them, police have said. Smith then turned and fired a single shot into Schmidt’s chest, prosecutors said.
Authorities also connected Donte Abdulmalik to the case through a woman who was inside a South Philadelphia home searched by police while they were looking for Outen-Fleming’s brother, Kadafi Fleming, according to an affidavit of probable cause for Donte Abdulmalik’s arrest.
Fleming, 19, is accused of stealing the SUV the teens took to and from the area before and after the killing.
The woman, identified in the affidavit only by her initials, told detectives she recognized Outen-Fleming from news coverage of the case and identified the second suspect — whom she said was the shooter — as his cousin. She also told investigators that Outen-Fleming’s stepfather had driven him to Colorado, according to the affidavit, and showed officers a speeding ticket that had arrived in the mail: a citation for a June 14 infraction in Simla, Colo., issued to a Mercedes-Benz registered to a deceased family member.
Hours later, detectives interviewed the woman again while Donte Abdulmalik waited outside on the porch, according to the affidavit. She stood by her identification of the two teenagers but retreated from the rest of her account, telling them she did not know who had driven Outen-Fleming to Colorado.
Prosecutors did not call the woman as a witness Thursday or introduce evidence from those interviews.
In his closing argument, Nasuti said records showing a phone in Colorado did not necessarily place his client there. Donte Abdulmalik, he argued, could have handed the phone to his stepson.
“No one who can place my client in the car,” he said. “No one who can place that phone number in his hand. They need to do that, even at this level.”
Yorgey-Girdy, the judge, said he found the evidence persuasive, however. He also denied requests from Nasuti and Scott Gessner, Milika Abdulmalik’s attorney, to reduce the couple’s bail after Assistant District Attorney Lauren Crump argued they posed a “severe flight risk.”
“This whole case,” Crump said, “is about flight.”
The parents are each being held on $250,000 bail, court records show.
Smith and Outen-Fleming are scheduled to return to court in October, along with Donte Abdulmalik, Milika Abdulmalik, and Fleming.
