CHELTENHAM TOWNSHIP, PA — A Philadelphia man has been charged in the 2018 fatal shooting of a 29-year-old woman during a road rage incident in Cheltenham Township, authorities said.
Jihad Henderson, 38, was arrested in connection with the Oct. 15, 2018, killing of Rithina Torn in the Melrose Park section of the township, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said.
The case remained unsolved for years until authorities connected a fired cartridge casing recovered from the 2018 scene was from the same gun used in an Oct. 13, 2024, shooting in the parking lot behind the Target store in Springfield Township, Delaware County, was a potential match.
“A recent ballistics match between a gun used in a 2024 near-fatal shooting in Delaware County was the same gun used to murder Rithina Torn in 2018 and the same man was holding that gun,” Steele said. “Torn’s murder was unsolved until that ballistics match."
Henderson is awaiting arraignment on charges of First-Degree Murder, Third-Degree Murder and Possessing an Instrument of Crime in Torn's death.
A preliminary hearing will be scheduled at that time.
Torn was killed at the intersection of Dewey Road and Front Street, where she was found in the street with multiple gunshot wounds.
A joint homicide investigation found through witness statements and video surveillance that a dark-colored sedan had been driving the wrong way down Dewey Street when it nearly struck the Honda Civic in which Torn was a passenger.
The sedan stopped at a red light and Torn got out of the passenger side of the Honda and walked to the driver's side window of the sedan.
Investigators said Torn was then shot multiple times by the sedan's driver, who fled. The district attorney's office later released video of the suspect vehicle and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the shooter's arrest, but the case remained unsolved.
Ballistics tests revealed that the bullets in the 2018 and 2024 shootings were fired by the same gun, identified as Henderson's legally owned Glock .40 caliber handgun, authorities said.
By then, Henderson had already been charged in the 2024 Delaware County case and was being held in Delaware County Prison.
In that crime, Henderson was convicted on April 24, 2026 of Aggravated Assault-Serious Bodily Injury, Simple Assault and Possessing following a jury trial, and is scheduled to be sentenced June 29.
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