Hunting Park man guilty in fatal shooting of landlord

A Hunting Park man was convicted of first-degree murder Friday in the 2013 shooting of the landlord trying to evict him from a rooming house after finding a gun.

A Common Pleas Court jury deliberated two days before returning the guilty verdict against Shaquille Henderson, 22, in the March 8, 2013, death of Tony Martin, 52, a retired professional boxer.

The verdict carries a mandatory life prison term without parole. Assistant District Attorney Thomas Lipscomb said the sentence would be formally imposed Friday by Judge Lillian H. Ransom.

Questioned by defense attorney Joseph Schultz, Henderson testified that an associate, Wayne Wiggins, shot Martin in a dispute over stolen drugs.

Lipscomb said there was no evidence that Wiggins had even been to Martin's rooming house in the 1300 block of West Butler Street or that Martin had been involved with drugs.

"This guy's tenants loved him," Lipscomb said.

According to court testimony, Martin arrived at the house around 1:30 p.m. to collect rents and confront Henderson about a gun Martin had found.

After a loud argument, a tenant reported hearing gunshots, and the sound of someone on the stairs and the front door closing. Henderson was seen pedaling away on a bicycle.

The autopsy showed that the 6-foot, 200-pound Martin was shot nine times and died of two shots to the head and one to the chest.

Martin came to Philadelphia from St. Louis in the 1980s to train as a boxer. The light heavyweight retired with a 34-6-1 record with 12 knockouts.

Henderson remained at large until April 26, 2013, when three police officers having coffee in the bookstore at Temple University spotted him waiting at a bus shelter on Cecil B. Moore Avenue west of Broad Street.

The officers recognized Henderson and approached him, and Henderson bolted and ran west on Cecil B. Moore, throwing a gun into an alley.

Police said the recovered police-issued Glock pistol had been reported stolen six months earlier by Henderson's aunt - Police Officer Fatima Henderson - and tests showed that the gun fired all nine cartridge casings found around Martin's body.