PHILADELPHIA — Three of the teens accused of shooting five young football players, killing one, outside Roxborough High School in September are expected to be charged with murder in connection with another fatal shooting the day before, police said Friday.
Troy Fletcher, 15, and Zyhied Jones, 17, could face the new murder charges as early as Friday afternoon for the killing of 19-year-old Tahmir Jones in North Philadelphia on Sept. 26, said Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.
Police also expect to charge Dayron Burney-Thorne, 16, who is wanted in the Roxborough case but remains a fugitive, with an additional murder charge once he is caught.
Around 2 p.m. on Sept. 26, police say, Tahmir Jones was walking in front of his family's home on the 600 block of North 13th Street when three shooters jumped out of a car and shot him more than 20 times. He was rushed to Jefferson Hospital, where he died a short time later.
Jones had just earned his GED and was working in a construction apprenticeship program through YouthBuild, his mother Theresa Guyton said.
They presented her with Jones' OSHA certification, which he had just earned before his death, at his funeral last month, she said. He was the youngest of five kids, and also helped his grandmother care for her home health care patients.
"He was my most affectionate child, he would just come kiss me for no reason," Guyton said.
Twenty-four hours after killing Jones, police say, the shooters, with two others, targeted a group of kids after their football scrimmage, unleashing more than 60 bullets as they walked to their locker room. Nicolas Elizalde, 14, was killed, and four other teens were injured.
Vanore said police have no evidence that Tahmir Jones' killing and the Roxborough shooting are related beyond the defendants, and that it's possible Jones' targeting was a case of mistaken identity.
The additional charges come about a month after the Roxborough shooting, and as new details have begun to emerge from charging papers and interviews about the shooting and its young defendants.
As of this week, all five suspected shooters have been identified, and four are in custody. Vanore said they all appeared to be in a friend group.
Detectives now believe the shooters in the Roxborough incident were retaliating for a prior shooting, Vanore said, and that at least one of the victims was targeted. Nicolas Elizalde was not the target, but was fatally struck by a stray bullet.
Vanore declined to elaborate on that earlier shooting, but a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation said it's believed that one of the shooters' relatives had been shot previously, and they were seeking revenge for that.
Police are investigating the shooters' connections to additional crimes in the area, Vanore said. According to court records, bullet casings recovered at the scene in Roxborough were linked to three guns used in other events. One of the guns were linked to Jones' killing.
Charging records show police identified the suspects of the Roxborough crime through DNA evidence recovered in the getaway car, ballistic evidence, and cell phone data and records. The records list no eye witnesses tying the suspects to the scene.
Here's what police recovered, according to the records:
On Sept. 27, around 4:45 p.m., the shooters arrived in a light green Ford Explorer, jumping out and shooting 64 times at the teens. They fled in the Explorer, which police found abandoned in Southwest Philadelphia the following night.
Inside the car, police found a partially-smoked marijuana blunt and ziploc bag containing DNA that matched to Zyhied Jones, as well as fingerprints that matched Burney-Thorne.
The Ford Explorer is a connected vehicle, meaning it has stand-alone cellular and internet service that tracks the car's location history and all devices connected to it. The car's data showed that a phone named "Northside DayDay" — with a number that police say matches Burney-Thorne's — was connected to the vehicle numerous times, including the day after the Roxborough shooting.
The car's location history provided detectives with the exact route, before, during and after the shooting.
Cell phone records from AT&T show the locations of the phones police believe belong to Jones and Burney-Thorne, which they said had a "matching pattern of movement" with the travel path of the Ford Explorer to and from the crime scene. It also put their phones "near the area" of the crime at the time it occurred.
The car had stopped at gas station on the way to the shooting, and surveillance video showed a few of the teens, some wearing masks, go inside the store. After police released their images to the public, the records say an anonymous "known source" identified one of the masked individuals as Fletcher.
The car's locations also showed that about an hour before the shooting, five males drove to North Philadelphia in a Chevy Impala, then got into the Ford Explorer and headed to Roxborough. When police recovered the Impala, they found two crumpled-up receipts for ammunition purchased by 21-year-old Yaaseen Bivins.
Video from the gun shop Bivins visited showed he and another person, who police now believe was Burney-Thorne, arrived at the store in the Impala and made the purchase. Forensic testing showed those bullets were then used in the shooting.
