Bensalem man is arrested in the shooting death of a 14-year-old Willingboro boy

A Bensalem man who police say shot and killed a 14-year-old boy in the parking lot of a Willingboro gas station on Saturday may have fired because he believed the teen had stolen a car belonging to a friend.

Tamir Phillips, 22, of the 3000 block of Knights Road, was charged with first-degree murder and related counts in the shooting death of Jesse “Nuk” Everett, 14, Burlington County Prosecutor Scott Coffina and Willingboro Township Public Safety Director Kinamo Lomon said in a statement Tuesday.

The slaying, which happened around 3 p.m. at the Phillips 66 gas station in the unit block of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, came as Phillips confronted Everett, who was sitting in the driver’s seat of a 2014 Honda Civic stolen the day before from a friend of Phillips’, authorities said.

Arrested Monday night, Phillips was being held at the Burlington County Jail in Mount Holly as he awaited his first court appearance, authorities said.

The investigation revealed that a day before the shooting, the owner of the Honda contacted township police to report that the vehicle had been stolen, authorities said..

In the moments leading up to the slaying, authorities said, Phillips was riding in a vehicle being driven by his girlfriend, Chelsea Holman, 29, of Willingboro, when they spotted the stolen car parked at a gas pump. Holman pulled into the station and parked behind the Honda, they said. Phillips walked to the driver’s side of the Honda, confronted Everett, shot him once in the head, and fled in Holman’s car, the authorities said.

Two other people who were inside the car with Everett were not injured. Everett was initially taken in a private vehicle to Virtua Willingboro Hospital before being airlifted to Cooper University Medical Center in Camden, where he died.

Holman was charged with third-degree hindering apprehension and fourth-degree obstruction of justice. She has since been released from custody, the prosecutor’s office said.

“Nuk was a goofy, loving, caring and supportive kid. He loved playing football, basketball & his game, but he loved his siblings more,” Everett’s mother, Danielle Everett, wrote on a GoFundMe page she set up for his funeral expenses and where she noted he was one of 14 siblings. “There is nothing in this world that can repair the bond that has been broken nor ease the pain that this tragedy has caused me & my children.”