The sixth, long-sought suspect in the Roxborough High shooting is finally in custody, police say
Zaakir McClendon was charged in the shooting that killed Nicolas Elizalde and wounded four other teens outside Roxborough High School.
The sixth and final person involved in the Roxborough High School shooting that killed Nicolas Elizalde and wounded four other teens is in custody, police said — a significant development in a case that law enforcement has spent the last three years working to fully solve.
Zaakir McClendon, 20 — who is already jailed for a separate, unrelated killing of another teen — was charged Friday with murder, aggravated assault, and related crimes after police said new forensic and cell phone evidence placed him at the scene of the September 2022 shooting outside of the high school.
Elizalde, 14, and other members of Roxborough High’s junior varsity football team were walking to the locker room after an afternoon scrimmage when five young men with guns jumped out of a car and fired more than 60 shots toward the group. The gunmen, police said, appeared to be targeting a player on one of the teams, or a teen who was walking past them.
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The five shooters fled in a green Ford Explorer driven by a sixth person. Investigators believe McClendon is one of the gunmen.
Elizalde was struck in the chest by a stray bullet. His mother ran to his side in the moments after the shooting, and held him as he took his last breath.
In the weeks and months after the shooting, police identified and arrested five young men, ages 15 to 21.
Three of the suspects are expected to go to trial this fall, while two have pleaded guilty and were sentenced earlier this year to decades in prison. At their sentencings, Elizalde’s family members pleaded for them to name the remaining gunman so that they could finally begin to heal.
“Do it for Nick,” Elizalde’s grandmother, Marge LaRue, told the teens. “You owe him.”
They did not. Ultimately, it was forensic evidence that led detectives to McClendon, court records show.
McClendon was arrested July 9 at his home in Northeast Philadelphia after police charged him with the 2023 killing of another teen, 16-year-old Nafis Betrand-Hill. He now faces a host of additional charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.
Assistant District Attorney Ashley Toczylowski and homicide detectives Stephen Grace and Craig Coulter for years with their colleagues had sought to identify the sixth and final person involved with the shooting.
Grace helped close the case on what was one of his final days on the job. He retires Aug. 16.
It was a swan song of sorts.
DNA evidence is what initially led them to McClendon — but cell phone records ultimately sealed the case, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
In September 2022, after the Roxborough High shooting, investigators recovered DNA on a fired cartridge casing at the scene, but without a suspect to compare the sample to, they could not determine whose DNA it was.
Then, in October 2023, McClendon was arrested for illegal gun possession and driving while intoxicated in Overbrook, and while he was being processed for that crime, his DNA was collected and sent to the forensics lab.
Officials have said it can take the lab, long known to be understaffed and behind on processing evidence, up to a year to assess critical evidence like guns, cell phones, and DNA recovered in crimes.
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Finally, last September, detectives were notified that McClendon’s DNA matched the DNA recovered on the casing at the Roxborough scene and from a sweatshirt worn by a shooter in Betrand-Hill’s slaying, according to the records.
In May, investigators collected and ran another swab of McClendon’s DNA to confirm the match, the records show. Then, the records say, detectives reviewed McClendon’s cell phone records, which showed he was in communication with Zyhied Jones and Saleem Miller, two teens charged with Elizalde’s slaying.
The teens were talking about the shooting over Instagram and text messages, according to law enforcement sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Those phone records, sources said, revealed for the first time a potential motive in the Roxborough High shooting. Messages between McClendon and others involved showed there was a conflict between one of the shooter’s friends, a girl, and a member of one of the football teams at the scrimmage, the sources said.
Elizalde had nothing to do with it and was caught in the crossfire, police have said.
On Friday, Elizalde’s mother, who had long prayed for an arrest, said it brought her little comfort. She should be spending the summer with her son, she said, eating ice cream and touring colleges — like UCLA, which her son dreamed of attending — ahead of what would have been his senior year in high school.
Instead, she said, she has to prepare for yet another trial and another series of painful reminders that her son is gone.