A Trenton man was sentenced to life in prison for killing his longtime girlfriend in a Bensalem motel
Orenthia Upshur told a Bucks County judge Monday that he wanted to take accountability for killing Maisha Coon by pleading guilty to first-degree murder.
Orenthia Upshur and Maisha Coon had been together for three decades. Long enough, their loved ones said Monday, that their two families had essentially become one.
And when Upshur, 52, executed Coon at the height of a domestic dispute inside a Bensalem motel in January 2025, he forever ripped them apart, inflicting what Coon’s daughters described as a wound that will never heal.
Standing in a Doylestown courtroom, Upshur vowed to take full responsibility for his actions and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Bucks County Court Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr. sentenced him to a mandatory term of life in prison.
“The facts of this case could not be graver,” Bateman told Upshur. “You took someone’s life, someone presumably who you loved a great deal, for no reason.”
Upshur shot Coon, 49, in the head and leg inside of a room at the Sleep Inn & Suites on Street Road they had rented together, prosecutors said. His attorney, Deborah Weinman, said the couple were having issues, each accusing the other of infidelity, and had seen a marriage counselor.
The stay at the motel, she said, was meant to help them solve the issues in their relationship.
After the shooting, Upshur drove to a relative’s house, where he confessed to killing Coon, according to evidence presented Monday. He then drove back to Trenton, where investigators said he shot at Coon’s older daughter, Quadira Peterson, as she got into an Uber.
Trenton Police took him into custody after a brief gunfight.
Peterson and her sister, Briasia Williams, in statements read Monday by a prosecutor, said their mother’s life was unfairly cut short by a man she deeply loved, one whom she had nursed back to health after a “near-fatal motorcycle accident.”
They said they’ll forever miss the little moments with her: listening to music together, watching her cook her signature collard greens, and helping her host the many parties at her home.
“My mother’s life was taken from her, and a piece of mine was taken with it,” Peterson said. “My mother was denied the chance to turn 50, to grow old, to keep filling rooms with her laughter.”
Upshur, in addressing Judge Bateman, said he was appalled by his actions, and wanted to take full accountability for what he has done. He wishes, he said, that he could take back what happened.
“As a man, I’m supposed to protect women,” he said. “So to be here, under the circumstances, is shameful.”
