An Upper Darby teen who killed his high school classmate is heading to state prison

When Michael Nixon pulled the trigger on the handgun he was carrying last May, he robbed Khalief Webster Jr. of his future, Webster’s family of a loving son, and the community of any semblance of safety, Webster’s mother said Tuesday in a crowded Delaware County courtroom.

“Khalief was not just the headlines, not just the crime scene tape that haunts me through the night, not just a victim,” Talaya Shaw said of her 17-year-old son. “Khalief was a young boy growing into a young man with a heart bigger than this world could handle.”

And Nixon, she told Judge Deborah Krull, “had no God-given right to decide when and how he left this world.”

For killing Webster, Nixon, 18, of Upper Darby, was sentenced to 18 to 36 years in state prison. Nixon pleaded guilty to third-degree murder earlier this year for the fatal shooting, which unfolded in May 2025 as the two teens, classmates at Upper Darby High School, crossed paths on Long Lane near Pine Street.

Emotions and tempers flared during Nixon’s hours-long sentencing, which the judge had to pause multiple times to rein in outbursts from those who filled the standing-room-only courtroom. Webster’s friends and relatives screamed to be heard, calling Nixon a coward, among other insults, and demanding justice.

Sheriff’s deputies barred more people from entering the hearing, and had to respond to a scuffle that erupted outside the courthouse after Nixon’s sentence was handed down.

On the day of the shooting, Webster was riding a miniature dirt bike when he encountered Nixon, who had walked 25 minutes from his own neighborhood to the area, according to investigators.

What happened next was the subject of debate during Tuesday’s hearing.

Nixon’s attorney, Pete Manaras, said Webster asked his client if he was the “young boul” he had seen “the other day,” and got off the bike to confront him.

The two teens, he said, knew each other and had gotten into disputes before. Nixon, fearing for his safety, shot Webster in the abdomen, Manaras said.

But Senior Deputy Attorney General Christopher Phillips, who prosecuted the case, said Nixon was the aggressor. He was out looking for Webster, Phillips said, armed and lying in wait in an area where he knew he would encounter the other teen.

“The public needs to be protected from people that would do such a thing on a sunny afternoon, on a beautiful May day, to a young man who didn’t see it coming,” Phillips said.

After the shooting, Nixon fled and was recorded on a surveillance camera telling someone on a phone call that he had shot somebody in the chest, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. Nixon’s mother then picked him up and drove him away.

Nixon addressed Webster’s family Tuesday to apologize, saying he wished he could take back what had occurred.

“I didn’t want to kill him. I never wanted to hurt him,” Nixon said. “I was just scared and my body reacted before my mind.”

Nixon said he encountered Webster by chance. He was carrying the gun because of previous run-ins with him, he said, and needed it for protection as he walked to a friend’s house.

Webster grabbed at his waistband as he confronted him, Nixon said. He believed Webster was reaching for a gun and reacted.

Nixon said he had grown up in an abusive household and that made him “perceive everything as a threat” and grow anxious when people get too close to him.

“I’m not saying this as an excuse for my actions, because I know I deserve to be locked up for what I did,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to turn my life around, because I do.”

Webster’s relatives, including his grandmother, Charlotte Webster, said that while they have not yet forgiven Nixon, they know that will come in time through their faith.

Still, she said, the pain Nixon caused their family was devastating.

“I believe this was a deliberate, heinous crime he committed,” she said. “He didn’t care about anything or anyone.”