Authorities have charged a Philadelphia-area teenager with homicide after he allegedly implicated himself on social media in a murder.

The 16-year-old suspect is currently detained at a juvenile detention center without bail. Prosecutors reportedly intend to try him as an adult, however, pursuant to state law that applies to serious violent felonies. He is due in court on December 7 for a preliminary hearing.

An investigation is ongoing, and detectives have asked members of the public to contact them if they have information related to the criminal probe.

“Bensalem Township Police say they checked on a mobile home after getting a call from a mother whose daughter got an Instagram video chat of someone saying they had just killed a person and needed help disposing of the body. The video also showed legs and feet covered in blood,” CBS Philadelphia reported about the ghastly incident that occurred on the day after Thanksgiving.

Inside the trailer, responding cops reportedly found the body of a 13-year-old girl on the bathroom floor who had apparently suffered a gunshot wound to her chest.

Watch a report about this tragic incident aired by the ABC Philadelphia affiliate:

Officers also said that they spotted the suspect running out of the back of the mobile home in the otherwise quiet neighborhood. They took him into custody shortly thereafter after locating him in a wooded area not far from the scene.

“As he was taken into custody, the [probable cause] affidavit states, [the suspect] told police ‘it was an accident’ and added that he is ‘going to jail for the rest of [his] life,'” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “He later told police that ‘[his] dad is going to kill [him],’ the affidavit states.”

In addition to criminal homicide, the suspect — identified by multiple media organizations as Joshua Cooper — faces charges of possessing instruments of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.

Police indicated that they found indications that “substantial steps were taken to clean up the crime scene.”

According to the Bucks County Courier Times, “The gun was found inside the mobile home, and police are investigating who owned the weapon and how Cooper had access to it…Authorities did find a gun safe and an empty holster in Cooper’s trailer, according to court documents.”

The suspect allegedly told investigators that earlier that day, “he was cleaning out his father’s safe, removing and reorganizing the firearms and sorting the ammunition inside it,” the Inquirer noted.

The victim and Cooper were purportedly hanging out at the latter’s trailer home watching Netflix prior to the alleged incident that prompted a 4 p.m. local time 911 call.

All suspects are presumed innocent until or unless they are convicted in a court of law of any alleged crimes.

Republished with permission from American Wire News Service

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Robert Jonathan

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Robert Jonathan is a staff writer for BizPac Review. He is a longtime writer/editor for news aggregation websites and has also developed content in the legal and financial publishing sectors as well as for online education. He earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of Connecticut School of Law, “a law school the basketball teams can be proud of.”

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