DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — A 30-year-old Bucks County man has been found guilty of murder in a deadly 2020 shooting connected to an ongoing battle between two Bristol Township neighborhoods.
Judge Wallace Bateman found Kelvontae Perry guilty of third-degree murder in the shooting death of 21-year-old Shaquille Love on Dec. 23, 2020.
Love was found shot in the head in the driver’s seat of his car on Edgely Road in Levittown.
Perry could have been convicted of first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison, but his lawyer argued the passenger in Perry’s car that night fired the deadly shot. He said there was no evidence of any planning or premeditation from Perry, or that Perry knew his passenger was going to shoot at Love’s car.
That passenger was never charged in the homicide.
However, prosecutors argued Perry’s car was seen in surveillance video tailing Love’s car for about eight minutes before the shooting. They argued that Perry’s actions showed he knew what was about to happen, and shared intent made him guilty of murder.
The passenger in Love’s car that night, Andre Bryant, believed that bullet was meant for him. Authorities said Bryant was rumored to have urinated on a memorial for two of Perry’s friends who were shot and killed during a prom photo shoot in Winder Village in 2018.
Perry’s lawyer called the entire case a smokescreen because prosecutors don’t have the real shooter, and they were “mad as hell at my client because he won’t give him up.”
Prosecutors described Love as “a good kid who steered clear from the ongoing violence between the Winder Village and Bloomsdale neighborhoods in Bristol.” They said he was only helping a friend that night by giving him a ride to his girlfriend’s house, two days before Christmas.