BENSALEM, Pa. – Authorities say a 16-year-old Pennsylvania boy has been charged with murder after another teenager reported receiving a video from him saying he had just killed someone and showing “legs and someone’s feet are covered in blood.’
Bensalem police said the girl’s mother called 911 on Friday to report a possible homicide and said her daughter had received an Instagram video from a 16-year-old acquaintance who allegedly “said he had just killed someone.”
“He then flipped the video image and showed someone’s legs and feet covered in blood,” police said in a statement. The young man then allegedly asked for help disposing of the body, police said.
Officers dispatched to check on the motor home reported that a juvenile male had run out of the back of the trailer. Inside, they found a “juvenile female deceased on the bathroom floor with an apparent gunshot wound,” police said. The officer also noted that “substantial steps” were taken “to clean up the crime scene,” police said.
The youth was arrested shortly thereafter and charged in Bucks County with murder, possession of instruments of crime and tampering with evidence. When he was taken into custody, he told officers “it was an accident,” authorities said in a probable cause affidavit.
William McVeigh, Bensalem’s director of public safety, said Bucks County Courier Times that the girl was 13 years old, unrelated, and not from Bensalem.
She had a single gunshot wound to the chest, McVeigh said. He thanked the girl who, after receiving the video, alerted her parents, saying her actions led to the youth’s swift arrest.
Court documents do not list a lawyer for the accused, who was taken to a juvenile detention center after the trial.