Delaware jury convicts Keith Gibson of 2 murders while on probation

A man on probation who allegedly killed six people in Delaware and Philadelphia during a five-month spree in 2021 has been convicted of first-degree murder in the two Delaware slayings.

Late Tuesday, after a two-week trial, a New Castle County jury found Keith Gibson, 41, guilty of two shooting deaths during robberies, three assaults, two other robberies, stealing a car, wearing body armor during one attack, and multiple firearms charges.

Jurors convicted Gibson of killing 28-year-old Leslie Ruiz-Basilio on May 15, 2021, while robbing the Metro by T-Mobile store on Kirkwood Highway in Elsmere where she worked and then stealing her vehicle. Jurors also found him guilty of killing 42-year-old Ronald Wright, 42, during a street robbery in Wilmington nearly a month later.

After a manhunt that involved state and federal law enforcement authorities in Delaware and Pennsylvania, Wilmington police arrested Gibson on June 8, 2021, after he held up the Rite-Aid pharmacy on West Fourth Street while wearing a bulletproof vest.

Gibson faces mandatory life in prison when he’s sentenced and faces separate drug charges in Delaware. Meanwhile, Philadelphia police have said he will be formally arrested for allegedly killing four people there from February to June of 2021, including his 54-year-old mother Christine Gibson at her workplace, Dunkin’ clerk Christine Lugo as she opened her store, and two men shot in a store.

Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings applauded the convictions in the “deeply disturbing case,” she said in a written statement. “The defendant carried out a vicious, cold-blooded crime spree …  and it is difficult to fathom how much more destruction he would have caused had he not been apprehended.”

Five of the killings occurred after April 13, 2021. That’s when a Delaware probation officer urged Superior Court Judge Vivian L. Medinilla to put Gibson behind bars for the remaining six and half years of a 20-year sentence he received in 2010 for manslaughter and a weapons count before being put on probation in 2020.

According to court transcripts obtained in 2021 by WHYY News, Medinilla said she would not consider the Philadelphia murder investigation in her deliberations for violating his probation by leaving Delaware and going to Philadelphia. She also said she could sentence Gibson that day but was going to “defer” to give the probation officer and Gibson’s attorney time to speak about “a proper consideration of the sentence.”

When the parties were back before Medinilla on April 27, a different probation officer sought only 30 days in prison for Gibson, who had already been held in prison for two months, beginning in February when Philadelphia police took him into custody to question him about his mother’s murder.

On April 27, 2021, Medinilla gave Gibson 31 days in prison, starting the clock when he had been returned to Delaware March 26, followed by 18 more months of probation. =

He was also ordered to complete an anger management course and an alcohol treatment program.

But since Gibson already served the prison time, the ruling made him a free man that day.

Less than three weeks later, Ruiz-Basili was shot to death at the Metro PCS store.

Judge Medinilla has not commented publicly on her decision. But after Gibson was arrested that June, then-Delaware Corrections Commissioner Claire DeMatteis told WHYY News that the Gibson case was yet another in a troubling “pattern” of judges and defense attorneys pushing back on probation officers who seek “hard jail time” for violent offenders who violate the terms of their release.

Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings applauded the convictions in the “deeply disturbing case,” she said in a written statement. “The defendant carried out a vicious, cold-blooded crime spree …  and it is difficult to fathom how much more destruction he would have caused had he not been apprehended.”

Five of the killings occurred after April 13, 2021. That’s when a Delaware probation officer urged Superior Court Judge Vivian L. Medinilla to put Gibson behind bars for the remaining six and half years of a 20-year sentence he received in 2010 for manslaughter and a weapons count before being put on probation in 2020.

According to court transcripts obtained in 2021 by WHYY News, Medinilla said she would not consider the Philadelphia murder investigation in her deliberations for violating his probation by leaving Delaware and going to Philadelphia. She also said she could sentence Gibson that day but was going to “defer” to give the probation officer and Gibson’s attorney time to speak about “a proper consideration of the sentence.”

When the parties were back before Medinilla on April 27, a different probation officer sought only 30 days in prison for Gibson, who had already been held in prison for two months, beginning in February when Philadelphia police took him into custody to question him about his mother’s murder.

On April 27, 2021, Medinilla gave Gibson 31 days in prison, starting the clock when he had been returned to Delaware March 26, followed by 18 more months of probation. =

He was also ordered to complete an anger management course and an alcohol treatment program.

But since Gibson already served the prison time, the ruling made him a free man that day.

Less than three weeks later, Ruiz-Basili was shot to death at the Metro PCS store.

Judge Medinilla has not commented publicly on her decision. But after Gibson was arrested that June, then-Delaware Corrections Commissioner Claire DeMatteis told WHYY News that the Gibson case was yet another in a troubling “pattern” of judges and defense attorneys pushing back on probation officers who seek “hard jail time” for violent offenders who violate the terms of their release.