Philly police arrest two suspects in 2022 slaying of a Hatfield teen. A third remains at large.
Seventeen-year-old Theodore Crawford was killed in what police described as an arms deal gone wrong.
Police arrested two men this week in connection to the slaying of one teen and the injuring of another nearly three years ago in East Falls, an incident that police described at the time as an arms deal gone wrong.
Amir Williams and Andre Saunders, both 21, have been charged with murder, attempted murder, and related offenses, police said. A third suspect remains at large.
In April 2022, according to police, the three men fired multiple shots into a red Lexus on the 3100 block of Berkeley Drive, killing 17-year-old Theodore Crawford, of Hatfield in Montgomery County, and injuring another 18-year-old.
At the time of the shooting, investigators found multiple firearms in the victims’ vehicle — including a stolen Smith & Wesson and two ghost guns in Crawford’s backpack. Authorities said they believed Crawford and his accomplice, whom they did not name, were planning to sell the guns when they were attacked.
For more than three years, the case appeared to sit cold. Crawford’s death was one of 516 homicides in Philadelphia that year, amid the most violent period in the city’s history since the crack-cocaine epidemic in the 1980s and early ‘90s.
Police arrested Saunders on Tuesdays and Williams on Wednesday. Officer Tanya Little, a department spokesperson, said their apprehensions came as a result of “persistent effort” from homicide detectives.
“There was no single breakthrough moment,” Little said Thursday.
Little said detectives secured multiple search warrants and analyzed “extensive data” linking the two men to the shooting. She did not provide further detail on the evidence in the case.
Police said the search continues for the third suspect, James Braswell, 22.