Police: Target of Facebook hit fatally shot

[August 17, 2011]  PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Philadelphia man was gunned down hours after a judge upheld felony charges against his ex-girlfriend, who was accused of offering $1,000 on Facebook for someone to kill him. But with the teenager who allegedly took the bait already in custody, investigators said Tuesday they aren't sure why the man was killed.

Corey White, 22, was shot once in the chest Monday night on a West Philadelphia street, authorities said.

Homicide investigators said White got into an argument with the occupants of a brown car and a man got out of the vehicle and shot him.

"There are a couple of other theories out there," Capt. James White said.

A few hours earlier, a municipal judge had approved charges including murder solicitation against White's girlfriend, 20-year-old London Eley of Philadelphia, and murder conspiracy and weapons charges against 18-year-old Timothy Bynum of suburban Darby.

"I will pay somebody a stack to kill my baby father," Eley wrote in a post this spring, according to a police affidavit.

"Say no more ... what he look like ... where he be at ... need that stack 1st," Bynum wrote back, police said.

A "stack" is $1,000, investigators said.

Eley's attorney said at Monday's hearing that his client was merely venting about an argument she'd had with her ex-boyfriend and had no intention of following through.

"When you do it on a computer, you are putting it out there for the whole world to see and memorializing it," defense attorney Gerald Stein said. "Unfortunately, it sort of magnifies the anger."

Prosecutors countered by saying Eley wasn't joking about the hit in the original post.

Bynum's lawyer, Lopez Thompson, said Tuesday that Bynum's family is devastated about White's death. Thompson insisted his client had no intention of killing White when he responded to the Facebook message and had nothing to do with White's shooting.

The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported White's death.

[Associated Press; By MARYCLAIRE DALE]

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