{"id":193849,"date":"2026-05-16T00:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/193849\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T00:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:42:09","slug":"teen-to-be-charged-with-3rd-degree-murder-after-girl-accidentally-shot-and-killed-in-upper-darby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/193849\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen to be charged with 3rd-degree murder after girl accidentally shot and killed in Upper Darby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A 14-year-old boy will be charged with third-degree murder after an <a data-ylk=\"slk:accidental shooting inside an Upper Darby home;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" href=\"https:\/\/6abc.com\/post\/teen-dies-gun-goes-off-kids-were-inside-upper-darby-pa-home\/19102039\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">accidental shooting inside an Upper Darby home<\/a> left a teenage girl dead.<\/p>\n<p>The boy will be charged as an adult, police told Action News on Friday. Investigators say they determined he had the gun in his hand based on witness interviews.<\/p>\n<p>No one else is facing charges. The name of the teen being charged has not been released.<\/p>\n<p>The shooting happened as a group of friends gathered inside a home on Thursday afternoon along the 100 block of Springton Road.<\/p>\n<p>Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt said investigators believe a group of friends, which included two boys and two girls, were hanging out at the home.<\/p>\n<p>He says they got hold of a gun in the house, and it went off while they were playing with it in the upstairs bedroom.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we do know is that it wasn&#8217;t like this was an act of violence, it wasn&#8217;t like this was a fight, it wasn&#8217;t a dispute,&#8221; said Bernhardt.<\/p>\n<p>Officials say a single bullet was fired, striking the victim in the head.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Someone lost their life, and three other juveniles are going to have to live with what occurred in that house for the rest of their lives. Guns are not toys,&#8221; said Bernhardt.<\/p>\n<p>It was a somber start to the day Friday, as students, parents and staff returned to Beverly Hills Middle School, where officials say the victim was a student.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a sad thing for the parents, so I really feel sorry for everybody,&#8221; said Samantha Myers from Upper Darby.<\/p>\n<p>The school district also made grief counselors available.<\/p>\n<p>Members of the community and police are making a plea for gun safety at home.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have gun locks here, and we have gun safes here,&#8221; said Bernhardt. &#8220;If anyone in this town or a resident needs one or wants one, please come here, and we can give that to you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You must put them away and take the bullets out and hide it. That is no joke up there when a child, 14, gets killed. A sad day,&#8221; said Cliff Myers from Upper Darby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 14-year-old boy will be charged with third-degree murder after an accidental shooting inside an Upper Darby home&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[22352,86300,147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-193849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-accidental-shooting","tag-timothy-bernhardt","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193849","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=193849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}