{"id":283880,"date":"2026-09-11T16:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/283880\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T16:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:24:12","slug":"final-suspect-in-murder-of-philly-teen-to-be-sentenced-nbc10-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/283880\/","title":{"rendered":"Final suspect in murder of Philly teen to be sentenced \u2013 NBC10 Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sentencing is set to take place Friday for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcphiladelphia.com\/news\/local\/zaakir-mcclendon-roxborough-high-school-montgomery-avenue-shootings-philadelphia\/4394509\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">the final suspect in the deadly shooting of a Philadelphia teenager near a high school football field.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In April 2026, Zaakir\u00a0McClendon, 21,\u00a0was convicted in the 2022 shooting death of 14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde outside of Roxborough High School as well as an unrelated shooting in 2023 that killed 16-year-old Nafis Betrand-Hill.<\/p>\n<p>Elizalde\u2019s mother is expected to speak at McClendon&#8217;s sentencing hearing on Sept. 11, 2026. NBC10 is working to confirm when McClendon will be sentenced for Betrand-Hill\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n<p>The murder of Nicolas Elizalde <\/p>\n<p>On Sept. 27, 2022, around 4:40 p.m., police responded to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcphiladelphia.com\/news\/local\/6th-suspect-arrested-deadly-roxborough-high-school\/4254815\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">a shooting near the Roxborough High School football field<\/a>. When they arrived at the scene, they found five shooting victims, including Elizalde. The teen was pronounced dead at a local hospital shortly after. Four other victims, all teenagers, sustained gunshot wounds ranging from graze injuries to more serious leg and arm injuries.<\/p>\n<p>Five people were initially arrested and charged in connection with the shooting. After an extensive investigation, detectives who processed the crime scene recovered DNA evidence that matched McClendon.<\/p>\n<p>Detectives then obtained McClendon\u2019s phone records which showed frequent contact around the time of Elizalde\u2019s murder with at least two people already charged in the case.<\/p>\n<p>McClendon was then arrested on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. At that point, McClendon had been arrested and charged a month prior in July 2025 in connection to the deadly shooting of 16-year-old Nafis Betrand-Hill in April 2023.<\/p>\n<p>There are additional resources for people or communities that have endured gun violence in Philadelphia.\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/resolvephilly.org\/gun-violence-resource\/\" target=\"_blank\">Further information can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sentencing is set to take place Friday for the final suspect in the deadly shooting of a Philadelphia&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[758,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-283880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-gun-violence","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283880","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=283880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}