18-Year-Old Transgender Sentenced for Murdering 12-Year-Old Girl

18-year-old transgender Ash Cooper, formerly Joshua Cooper, was sentenced to 15 to 40 years in a Pennsylvania state prison after pleading guilty to murdering a 12-year-old girl in November 2022.

NBC Philadelphia reported that Morgan Connors was shot and killed at the “Top of the Ridge Trailer Park on Gibson Road in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.”

Cooper came under fire after one of his friends called to say the teenager had used an Instagram chat to say he had killed someone and needed help getting rid of the body.

“The legs and feet of someone covered in blood” were visible in the video chat, according to the friend.

The Buck County District Attorney’s Office revealed that Cooper used his father’s gun to commit the murder.

He “[replaced] the batteries his father had removed to make the combination lock inoperable.”

“It’s a horrible tragedy, a tragedy no family should ever have to undergo,” Bucks County Court Judge Jeffrey L. Finley said.