PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A judge has upheld murder charges against a man accused of shooting up a bar in Northeast Philadelphia in June, fatally hitting a 21-year-old bystander.
Anthony Nelson sat through a preliminary hearing Tuesday, listening to homicide detectives and a bar manager who identified him as the shooter.
The manager of Philly Bar & Restaurant, 2417 Welsh Road, told the judge Nelson wanted to play pool, but staff told him he couldn’t, because a bar league was using the tables. He said Nelson then got into a fight with them, and they tossed him from the bar.
Related
He said Nelson was yelling that he was being removed from the bar because he is Black.
He said Nelson left the premises and came back several times, trying to get back in, and he eventually grabbed a gun from his truck and fired several shots into the building — striking Jailene Holton once in the head.
Video shows the sequence of events. The suspect is wearing a black shirt and light-colored shorts. He is with two friends in white shirts, walking back and forth between the larger parking lot and the bar's front doors. Then, minutes later, the suspect seems to fire a gun into the bar from dozens of feet away.
A camera inside the building shows Holton falling off a barstool and lying motionless on the floor.
The suspect and the other two men, who run from the gun fire, seem to leave in the truck.
The manager said, when he went back inside the bar, Holton was conscious and bleeding from the head. He applied pressure and called 911. She was taken to the hospital, where she died.
A homicide detective testified that people who knew Nelson identified him as the shooter.
Nelson’s attorney tried to poke holes during the hearing, pointing out that there wasn’t enough evidence to hold his client on murder, and that there’s no clear video of the suspect firing into it.
The judge held Nelson on all charges. Nelson will be formally arraigned in the coming weeks.