{"id":179606,"date":"2026-04-29T20:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T20:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/179606\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T20:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T20:49:07","slug":"man-pleads-guilty-to-role-in-roxborough-high-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/179606\/","title":{"rendered":"Man pleads guilty to role in Roxborough High shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A Philadelphia man has admitted his role in the separate killings of two teenagers, including the 2022 shooting at Roxborough High School.<\/p>\n<p>It was DNA from a shell casing that matched Zaakir McClendon to the shooting death of <a href=\"http:\/\/audacy.com\/kywnewsradio\/news\/local\/zaakir-mcclendon-arrested-charged-nicolas-elizalde-roxborough-high-shooting\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde<\/a> \u2014 and to the injuries of four others following a football scrimmage at Roxborough High School on Sept. 27, 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors said detectives also tied McClendon to Instagram conversations and phone records talking about the shooting, which they said was motivated by an altercation involving one of their friends. <\/p>\n<p>His DNA also matched a sweatshirt worn by one of the shooters in the murder of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.audacy.com\/kywnewsradio\/news\/local\/teen-shot-killed-shooters-open-fire-crowd-north-philadelphia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Nafis Betrand-Hill<\/a>, a 16-year-old gunned down on April 13, 2023 at 23rd Street and Montgomery Avenue in North Philly. Another man, Ranief Allen, was convicted in that murder as well. <\/p>\n<p>McClendon pleaded guilty to two third-degree murder charges for both teens, four counts of attempted murder for the injured Roxborough teens, plus gun and conspiracy charges. He is set to be sentenced in September. <\/p>\n<p>He marks the third suspect to plead guilty in the Roxborough case. Three others are expected to go to trial in June. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A Philadelphia man has admitted his role in the separate killings of two teenagers,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[31,327,80151,80150,69,71,70,80149],"class_list":["post-179606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-crime","tag-guilty-plea","tag-nafis-betrand-hill","tag-nicolas-elizalde","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-roxborough-high-school-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}