BENSALEM, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — A 51-year-old man is in custody following Wednesday’s deadly shooting in a Bensalem motel that prompted a frantic search of dozens of hotel rooms in the area of Street Road and Route 1. As that search was going on in Bucks County, officials said the suspect was in a violent standoff with police in Trenton.
Orenthia Upshur, who is currently in police custody in New Jersey, is expected to be extradited to Bucks County to face murder charges for shooting and killing his girlfriend, 49-year-old Maisha Coon, in a room at the Sleep Inn on Street Road in Bensalem.
Around 5 a.m. Wednesday, investigators said someone went to the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in Trevose to report an incident. They said a family member just told them he shot his girlfriend in a hotel room in Bensalem, though he didn’t say which one.
Bensalem Director of Public Safety William McVey said authorities were able to get a general location from Coon’s cellphone near Street Road and Route 1.
“In Bensalem, we have many motels and hotels in that area, so we conducted a large-scale law enforcement search of all the motels and hotels from Route 1 to Street Road,” he explained.
They found Coon’s body around 10:30 a.m. One of the bullets went through the floor and into an occupied room on the lower level.
McVey said no one from the Sleep Inn called 911.
While police were searching hotel rooms in Bensalem, Trenton police were responding to gunshots near Parkside Avenue and Oak Lane. Officers said they saw Upshur run into a home on Oak Lane, where he then fired several more shots out of a second-floor window.
Upshur was taken into custody. Despite about a dozen gunshots, police said no one in Trenton was injured.