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Teen gunman draws life sentence for murder over PlayStation

Malik Anderson was convicted of killing his childhood friend Daquan Crump over proceeds from a stolen game system.

Malik Anderson
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MALIK ANDERSON will have a long time to ponder what led him to shoot his childhood friend nearly a dozen times in the head in August 2013.

A Philadelphia jury Wednesday found him guilty of first-degree murder and related counts for the slaying of Daquan Crump, 19. Crump was targeted after he left Anderson out of proceeds from the sale of a stolen PlayStation 3 video game system, according to trial testimony.

Common Pleas Judge Steven Geroff sentenced Anderson, 19, to life in state prison without parole.

The murder shocked the city for its viciousness and for the petty motivation that led Anderson to lure the victim to a demolition site along the 10000 block of Northeast Avenue in Bustleton.

Anderson and Crump grew up together and were with three or four other friends the night before the killing playing video games at each other's homes, police said at the time of Anderson's arrest.

Anderson, however, was harboring a grudge over his belief that Crump had cut him out of receiving a share of the money he got from the sale of the stolen game system.

Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore told the jury that Anderson lured Crump to the desolate site and exacted lethal revenge.

Defense attorney A. Charles Peruto Jr. told the jury that other friends killed Crump and framed Anderson.

But homicide detectives recovered the murder weapon - a .22 caliber semiautomatic Ruger handgun - inside the refrigerator at Anderson's family home on Tomlinson Road near Clark Street in the Northeast. They also got Anderson to confess to having killed Crump.

Peruto argued that the confession was the result of his high-school dropout client having been coerced by detectives.

Crump lived in the neighborhood where he was killed and had recently began working at a nearby Wendy's restaurant. He graduated from George Washington High School in 2012.