Officers learned from a 911 call that Cooper was video chatting a friend on Instagram when she said she’d killed someone, prosecutors said. During the video call, she ‘flipped’ the camera and showed the body of a 12-year-old girl ‘covered in blood’, officials said. — AFP
An 18-year-old will go to prison after being accused of fatally shooting a girl with her father’s gun in 2022, Pennsylvania officials said and news outlets reported.
Ash Cooper pleaded guilty to murder, possession of an instrument of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, according to a March 21 news release by the Bucks County district attorney.
“This is a big step in the healing process, taking responsibility,” her attorney, Paul Lang, said in court, according to the Bucks County Courier Times. “I have hope for Ash.”
Bensalem Township officers learned from a 911 call that Cooper was video chatting a friend on Instagram when she said she’d killed someone, prosecutors said.
During the video call, she “flipped” the camera and showed the body of a 12-year-old girl “covered in blood,” officials said.
Then Cooper asked her acquaintance to help clean up and dispose of the girl’s body, prosecutors said.
Officials didn’t specify if Cooper knew the girl.
When police arrived at the trailer park, they saw someone “running out of the back of the trailer”, officials said. When they went inside the home, they said they found the girl dead on the bathroom floor with a gunshot wound.
After police set up a perimeter, Cooper was taken into custody, officials said.
Cooper got into her father’s gun safe by replacing the batteries her father had taken out so the safe’s lock wouldn’t work, prosecutors said.
“The human heart is not built for such heartbreak,” a letter prosecutors read from the victim’s grandpa in court said.
Cooper was sentenced to 15 to 40 years in prison and a consecutive sentence of seven years of probation, officials said.
Bensalem Township is about a 20-mile drive northeast of Philadelphia. – The Charlotte Observer/Tribune News Service
