After a grand jury wrapped up their work, two Philadelphia residents have been charged in connection to the December 2020 murder of a man outside his Middletown Township workplace.
Joyce Brown-Rodriguez, 55, and Kahlill Saleem Brown, 33, were charged Friday night with homicide, criminal conspiracy, persons not to possess a firearm, firearms not to be carried without a license, possessing instruments of crime, recklessly endangering another person and false swearing.
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An investigative grand jury at the Justice Center in Doylestown Borough has been meeting since January as Middletown Township police and Bucks County Detectives have continued their probe into the murder of Christopher M. Wilson, 52, a Philadelphia father of nine kids.
Credit: Submitted
Wilson was gunned down at 5:51 a.m. on December 10, 2020 in a shooting outside recycling company Kuusakoski Inc.’s Wheeler Way facility just before his shift was due to begin.
Below are details from the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office:
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Witnesses reported the shooter, described as a shorter male, approached Wilson on foot and shot him several times, continuing to shoot when the victim fell to the ground.
The shooter got into the passenger seat of a dark-colored sedan with tinted windows, and fled the scene. The sedan, the investigation found, had been parked in the corner of the parking lot for at least a half-hour prior to the shooting.
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The Investigating Grand Jury handed down a presentment on Thursday night, recommending that Joyce Brown-Rodriguez and her son Kahlill Brown be charged with conspiring to and committing the murder of Christopher Wilson. The presentment was accepted by Supervising Judge Raymond F. McHugh.
The investigation found that Wilson and Brown-Rodriguez had been romantically involved since 2018, but Wilson had ended the relationship and had confided in a co-worker that he was attempting to get her to leave him alone and was going to contact Brown-Rodriguez’s estranged husband to let him know about the affair, according to the Grand Jury presentment.
After moving out of his apartment in Philadelphia, Wilson began staying at the home of his girlfriend on Dec. 7, 2020 and had planned on moving in with her. Starting that day and continuing the next day, Brown-Rodriguez began to repeatedly call and text Wilson with almost no response from Wilson.
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On Dec. 8, 2020, while continuing to try and reach Wilson, Brown-Rodriguez called an acquaintance of one of her sons and asked him about obtaining a firearm.
Brown-Rodriguez called Wilson 14 times on Dec. 9, 2020, before heading to his workplace at 6 a.m. At 9:22 A.M., while sitting in the parking lot outside Wilson’s workplace, she texted her son, Kahlill Brown, “Please call me. I need your help.”
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One of Wilson’s co-workers told detectives he saw Wilson and Brown-Rodriguez arguing in the parking lot about noon that day, and could hear Wilson say to her, “What do you want?,” “Why do you keep following me?,” and “Why are you here?” She also scratched the word “Child” on the hood of his vehicle.
Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
On the day of the shooting, there were no calls placed between Brown-Rodriguez and Wilson. Cellphone evidence showed that her son, Kahlill Brown, was in the immediate vicinity of Wilson’s workplace at 5:10 A.M. that day until the time Wilson was killed.
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Authorities have said since the shooting that they believed Wilson was “specifically targeted.”
LevittownNow.com was there a year after the murder as township and county detectives asked people heading into the industrial park if they saw anything suspicious the morning of the killing.
Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
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“The mistake [the killer] made was doing this in Bucks County,” Middletown Township Detective Lt. Steve Forman said in December. “If this was Philadelphia, this could have been just another homicide.”
Brown-Rodriguez and Saleem Brown are also accused of lying to the investigating grand jury, leading to the false swearing charge, authorities said.
Brown-Rodriguez and Saleem Brown were sent to the county lockup after District Judge Terry Hughes denied bail due to the seriousness of the offenses.
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Click here to read the charging documents.
Editor’s Note: All individuals arrested or charged with a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The story was compiled using information from police and public court documents.
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