3rd-degree murder plea in road rage shooting death

Twenty-nine-year-old David Desper entered the plea Wednesday in Chester County in the death of 18-year-old Bianca Roberson.

Associated Press

September 6, 2018

West Goshen Police Chief Joseph Gleason, left, and Charles Gaza, with the Chester County, Pa., District Attorney's Office, hold sketches of then-suspected road rage shooter during a news conference outside police headquarters, Friday, June 30, 2017, in West Goshen, Pa. Twenty-nine-year-old David Desper pleaded guilty Wednesday in Chester County in the death of 18-year-old Bianca Roberson. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

A man has pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in the shooting death of a recent high school graduate during what police say was a road rage confrontation last year in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Twenty-nine-year-old David Desper entered the plea Wednesday in Chester County in the death of 18-year-old Bianca Roberson.

Police say the two jockeyed for space in the merger of a highway lane in West Goshen Township in June 2017 before Desper shot Roberson in the head, and her car veered off into a ditch and hit a tree. Desper turned himself in four days later.

The plea came a week before criminal proceedings were scheduled to begin. Desper was originally charged with first- and third-degree murder, criminal homicide, possession of an instrument of crime and reckless endangerment.

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