A North Philly man will spend decades in prison for killing his FedEx coworker and shooting at city cops

Bart Masciulli was a natural coach and mentor: He always strove to make those around him better, his family said through tears Tuesday in a Delaware County courtroom.

So when a colleague at FedEx failed a truck-driving exam Masciulli gave him in 2022, Masciulli still believed in the man’s ability and worked behind the scenes to get him another chance.

But Keith Blount was furious that he didn’t pass the test, blamed Masciulli for his failing grade — and murdered him.

Blount, 61, was sentenced to 35 to 80 years in state prison on Tuesday for ambushing Masciulli in the parking lot of their workplace one afternoon and gunning him down as prepared to drive home.

The North Philadelphia resident then drove away and started a gunfight with Philadelphia police officers in an apparent attempt to end his life while causing as much chaos as possible, according to First Assistant District Attorney Tanner Rouse.

“Mr. Blount is a danger to every single person in this community based on those actions, and I don’t say that lightly,” Rouse said. “He killed someone who did absolutely nothing wrong and then went down and engaged in a shootout on a public street.

“Mr. Blount literally gave no regard for human life that day,” Rouse added.

Blount pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, assaulting a law enforcement officer, aggravated assault, and gun offenses in October. He did so, according to his attorney, Mary Elizabeth Welch, to spare Masciulli’s wife and three children from the trauma of a trial.

Welch had urged Delaware County Court Judge G. Michael Green to take into account more than the just raw emotion his family and friends demonstrated in their statements to the court.

She said Blount suffers from intellectual disabilities that affect his comprehension, and had struggled with drug addiction after losing three of his five siblings. Welch said Blount was under the influence of unspecified drugs on the day of Masciulli’s killing.

Blount, for his part, offered an apology to Masciulli’s family Tuesday, saying he was sorry for all the pain his actions had caused them that day.

Police in Tinicum Township were called to FedEx’s facility in Cargo City, a secure area attached to Philadelphia International Airport, just after 2 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2022, according to prosecutors. There, they found Masciulli shot multiple times inside his Jeep Patriot, which had been parked in an employee lot.

Surveillance footage from the scene showed Blount arriving at the employee parking hours earlier, according to court filings. He sat in his car, parked nearby, until Masciulli got into the Jeep to leave.

As Masciulli prepared to drive away, Blount walked up to the driver’s side window of his Jeep, spoke with him briefly, then stepped back and fired five times with a handgun, prosecutors said. Blount fled the scene, and an alert was issued for his Honda sedan.

When officers in Philadelphia saw the car hours later and approached Blount, he immediately opened fire, investigators said.

The officers took cover behind a nearby truck and fired back, striking Blount multiple times. They were able to disarm him and take him into custody for shooting at police and for killing his coworker.

In court Tuesday, Masciulli’s wife, Mary, her voice thick with emotion, described the sheer weight of the grief she and her family have carried since that day. Blount robbed them, she said, of milestones they had looked forward to for years: Their daughters’ weddings, the birth of their grandchildren, and simply growing old together.

She described her husband of 25 years as a hard worker, often juggling three or four jobs while still finding time to coach football for a youth group his father had started. He bragged about his children, she said, and told anyone who would listen about their accomplishments.

He was an expert karaoke singer, and left every room full of strangers with a new group of friends.

But the man she described as “the life of the party” was taken from her, she said, by a killer who “chose violence toward a loving, caring man.”

“[Blount] doesn’t deserve compassion nor leniency,” she told the judge. “He had every chance to do something with his life. I don’t care if he dies in prison.”