Ash Cooper, previously known as Joshua Cooper, being escorted by authorities (WCAU screenshot)
An 18-year-old transgender person in Pennsylvania will be in prison for as long as four decades for killing fatally shooting a 12-year-old girl and then boasting about it in an Instagram video chat, even displaying the girl’s body. shooting Judge Jeffrey L. Finley of the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas has ordered Ash Cooper, previously Joshua Cooper, to serve 15 to 40 years in a state correctional facility for killing Morgan Connors in 2022.
Following Cooper's guilty plea for third-degree murder, possession of a weapon, and tampering with evidence, Finley issued the sentence.
During Cooper’s sentencing, Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristin M. McElroy read a statement from Morgan’s grandfather expressing the intense pain and heartbreak over his granddaughter's loss.
This message was shared in a news release.
where he wrote, “The human heart is not built for such heartbreak.”
The investigation into Cooper began on Nov. 25, 2022, when a call to the Bensalem Township Police Department reported a potential homicide at the Top of the Ridge Trailer Park.
On an Instagram video chat, Cooper showed someone covered in blood and asked for help cleaning up and disposing of the body, after which first responders found the victim's body and arrested Cooper.
Cooper used a gun belonging to her father, which she accessed by bypassing the safe's security measures, to kill Morgan.
Upon examining the crime scene, authorities discovered evidence of attempted clean-up.
Ash Cooper, formerly known as Joshua Cooper, has been sentenced to up to 40 years in a Pennsylvania state prison for shooting a 12-year-old girl to death two years ago.
During the investigation, authorities learned that Cooper used a gun owned by her father to kill Morgan. The gun had been locked in a safe inside Cooper’s father’s home, but Cooper was able to get into the safe “by replacing the batteries his father had removed to make the combination lock inoperable,” prosecutors said.