A 16-year-old Pennsylvania boy has been arrested in connection with the death of a 13-year-old girl.
Joshua Cooper is being charged as an adult with criminal homicide, possessing instruments of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, police said in a statement.
According to a Bensalem Police Department news release, police received a 911 call on Friday to alert them about the incident.
“The caller stated that her daughter received an Instagram video chat from a 16-year-old acquaintance. During the video chat, the 16-year-old stated that he had just killed someone,” the release stated.
“He then flipped the video image and showed the legs and feet of someone covered in blood. He then asked for assistance with disposal of the body.”
Police responded to the community where Cooper lived, the Top of the Ridge Trailer Park in Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia.
“When officers entered the mobile home, they observed a deceased juvenile female on the floor of the bathroom with an apparent gunshot wound. There were also indications that substantial steps were taken to clean up the crime scene,” the release stated.
Police said the teen fled the home when they arrived, but was later apprehended.
In an initial interview with police, Cooper told police the shooting “was an accident,” CNN reported, citing a criminal complaint.
The complaint said Cooper made “unsolicited utterances” to police that he was “sorry” and that he would be “going to jail for the rest of [his] life.”
The complaint said Cooper said he and the 13-year-old had had a previous relationship. On the day of the shooting, he said, the pair watched Netflix and at some point, the girl left the room where they were to go to the bathroom.
The complaint said the girl was identified by the jewelry she was wearing at the time.
Cooper, according to the complaint, told police that before the girl was dropped off at his home, he had accessed his father’s gun safe by finding and inserting batteries to make it function.
He said he had sorted ammunition and “removed, reorganized and replaced the firearms that were in the safe,” the complaint stated, according to CNN.
Further details were not revealed because Cooper and his mother “terminated” the interview, according to the complaint.
The victim, whose identity has not been released, died due to a single gunshot wound to her neck and upper chest, according to the Bucks County Coroner’s Office, the Bucks County Courier Times reported.
A 16-year-old, Joshua Cooper allegedly confessed to a friend during a video chat on Instagram with a 16-year-old female acquaintance that he killed someone.
That acquaintance told police that Cooper flipped the video camera around & showed the feet of the 13-year-old victim…
/ pic.twitter.com/I9vC8jljKJ— Deniride (@Edirined) November 28, 2022
One Top of the Ridge resident, identified only as “Katlynn,” told Philadelphia’s KYW-TV that the scene around the investigation was new for the mobile home park.
“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,” the resident said.
Cooper “seemed harmless,” neighbor Gary Seeley said, according to WPVI-TV. “I know he had problems you know. I thought he was a danger to himself, if anything.”
“I was going to invite the kid over for turkey dinner because his dad was hunting that day,” he said.
Neighbor Charlie Petree told KYW that Cooper and his father had moved into the trailer park about six months ago.
“I talked to the boy out here on the bench a couple of times and he seemed troubled,” Petree told the station.
On Friday, he said, “I heard a gunshot and I know about gunshots. And I come out and open the door and I see the boy run across there.”
