Three teenage boys, the youngest of whom is just 14, have been arrested for robbing and beating a homeless man to death.
Brandon Conrad, 14, Malik Page, 16, and Emmanuel Harris, 17, have all been charged with murder for the death of Kevin Cullen, 57.
The teens, who were arrested after police working on the case were assigned to their high school, will all be charged as adults.
They were all taken in to custody in front of their ‘shocked’ relatives and custodians on Sunday morning.
Cullen, whose friends say he was between homes, was beaten to death in the street in Philadelphia last month.
Police launched a desperate appeal for his killers who witnesses said laughed as they attacked him.
The boys were arrested as a result of surveillance footage and comments from their classmates who they are understood to have told about the killing.
‘It was a combination of video, word of mouth from varying sources. The kids started talking, they spoke to their friends.
‘They were known for troublemaking inside the school,’ Philadelphia homicide Captain John Ryan told DailyMail.com on Thursday.
The boys are accused of murdering 57-year-old Kevin Cullen who died in hospital on November 27 after suffering repeated blows to the head
Two of the boys live with their relatives who had no knowledge of their involvement in the crime, he added.
‘They were more or less in shock.’ The other teenager lives in foster care.
Conrad and Page live in adjacent blocks. All three are ‘neighborhood kids’ but none has been in trouble with the law before, he said.
They are accused of attacking Cullen at 5.55pm on November 26.
Grainy surveillance footage taken from a store nearby showed them following Cullen down the street moments before the attack.
Witnesses say they heard the boys smashing his head into a brick wall several times.
When they ran over to intervene, they found Cullen unconscious and with his pockets turned inside out.
‘They were laughing, like it was funny.
‘They hit his head into a wall so hard I felt it in my house on the second floor,’ one resident told WPIV before the boys’ arrest.
Police later said the man had nothing on him for them to steal.
Cullen, whose family said he struggled with alcohol addiction, died the following day in Aria Torresdale Hospital as a result of blows to the head.
He was known locally and would often stay with friends.
The attack took place near Loring Street in Philadelphia on November 26 at 5.55pm
Cullen’s family said he was not abandoned but that he had been battling demons including alcohol addiction and that he was between homes
His relatives said they were devastated to learn of his death and that he had been battling demons but was not destitute.
‘We didn’t get to see him too often. He would come in and out of our lives.
‘He was not abandoned, he was not unloved. He was loved deeply,’ one of his brothers said.
The teenage boys all attend Abraham Lincoln High School. The school declined to comment on their arrest.
All are now being held in a special area of an adult prison as they await their first court date.
The boys are all students at Abraham Lincoln High School (above). They were arrested after police were assigned to conduct interviews there