PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Two bullets fired nearly six years apart helped detectives solve a road rage killing in Cheltenham, Montgomery County.
Back in October 2018, the Honda Civic that 29-year-old Rithina Torn was riding in was nearly hit by a car going the wrong way on a one-way street.
Both cars kept going. When they stopped at a red light at Dewey Road and Front Street in Cheltenham, Torn got out and approached the driver of the other car. That’s when he was shot and killed.
Despite a reward and significant publicity, Montgomery County detectives were unable to track down the shooter.
His death remained unsolved until detectives matched the bullet casing to another one found at a shooting scene behind a Target store in Springfield Township, Delaware County, in 2024.
Ballistics evidence from the Springfield shooting was entered into the NIBIN (National Integrated Ballistic Information Network) national database, and it hit as a possible match for the 2018 Cheltenham shooting.
Investigators determined the bullets in both shootings were fired by the same gun, owned by 38-year-old Jihad Henderson, of Philadelphia.
At his trial for the Springfield shooting, Henderson testified that he had owned that gun since 2017 and never loaned it to anyone or ever misplaced it. Henderson had the same gun on him about three months after the Cheltenham murder, when he was pulled over by Philadelphia police.
Henderson is already behind bars in Delaware County for the 2024 shooting. He is awaiting sentencing. Now, Henderson is charged with first-degree murder in Montgomery County in connection with Torn’s killing.
