A Bensalem teen will face a county judge in a slaying prosecutors say he displayed over Instagram

When confronted with the details of his best friend’s death, a Bensalem teen broke down Monday, unable to face a judge.

Joshua Cooper, 16, had prepared for a preliminary hearing on criminal homicide charges in the November death of a 13-year-old girl found shot once in the back inside the trailer Cooper shared with his father. It was a crime, police said, that Cooper asked a friend to help him cover up over Instagram.

But after just two witnesses in what promised to be the first public accounting of the circumstances surrounding the victim’s death, Cooper’s attorney, Paul Lang, asked Magisterial District Judge Michael Gallagher to end the hearing.

Cooper ultimately waived the proceeding, sending the charges up to the county court in Doylestown. Afterward, Lang declined to discuss what led Cooper to change his mind about having the hearing.

» READ MORE: Bensalem teen charged in homicide after showing body on Instagram video call, police say

“It’s a complicated, evolving and ever-changing case when you have juveniles of any sort,” Lang said. “And when it’s coupled with the decedent as my client’s best friend, this is a challenging case.”

Bensalem investigators testified during the brief hearing that they were summoned to Cooper’s home in the Top of the Ridge Trailer Park on Nov. 24. The caller said Cooper told her daughter he had killed someone and needed help disposing of the body. Cooper, the woman told police, had shown her daughter footage of a corpse over Instagram.

When officers arrived at Cooper’s trailer, they spotted him running from the scene, toward a wooded area nearby. Inside the trailer’s small, cramped bathroom, officers found the 13-year-old victim. She was lying facedown, shot once in the back. Police have declined to identify the victim, prosecutors said, at the request of her family.

A pile of blood-soaked towels were next to the body, as were bottles of beach and other household cleaners, the officers testified Monday. It appeared, they said, that someone had attempted to clean up the scene.

Bullet holes in the home made it seem to the officers that the shot that killed the girl had been fired inside the trailer and traveled outside. Investigators later found a bullet lodged in the exterior wall of another trailer nearby.

Cooper was taken into custody by officers at the scene. He told them “it was an accident” and said he feared he was is going to jail for the rest of his life, according to testimony.

He also told the officers that the gun used in the shooting was in his father’s safe, and officers were able to recover it there.

But any other details about the circumstances leading up to the shooting were left unsaid. Cooper, who sobbed throughout the proceeding, asked to be excused from the courtroom for an extended period before Lang ended the hearing.

Previously, Cooper told detectives after his arrest that on the day of the shooting, he was organizing his father’s firearms inside his safe and sorting the ammunition inside it, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

The victim had texted Cooper that morning, the affidavit said, and was dropped off at his home by her family. The two teens stayed at Cooper’s home Friday afternoon and watched Netflix.

Cooper told investigators that at some point during the afternoon, the victim left the area where they were watching TV to use the bathroom, and that Cooper did not accompany her.

Similar to what happened during Monday’s hearing, Cooper ended his interview with police after providing that information, and declined to elaborate about the shooting itself, according to the affidavit.