MLK High Principal ‘blindsided’ by student’s arrest in connection with alleged online witness-intimidation

District Attorney Seth Williams announced Wednesday that a 17-year-old male has been arrested on witness-intimidation charges in connection with information posted online related to a 2012 shooting in Southwest Philadelphia.

Williams said he will seek to charge 17-year-old Nasheen Anderson as an adult.

Anderson was arrested at Martin Luther King High School in West Oak Lane on Tuesday. He allegedly “posted photos of secret grand jury evidence onto his Twitter page,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

MLK Principal William Wade told NewsWorks that the arrest, which came after a massive-police response to the Stenton Avenue school “just blindsided me.”

“He was not a problem at this school,” Wade said Thursday. “Not one class cut.”

The district attorney said he was allegedly a problem outside of the school, though.

“The actions of this teenager could have lasting repercussions on untold cases here in Philadelphia,” said Williams in a press release.

“Witness intimidation has reached near epidemic levels and we are very serious about not only stopping it, but also prosecuting the criminals who are engaging in these despicable actions to fullest extent of the law,” he continued. “I don’t care how old you are, if you intimidate a witness in this city I’m going to come after you.”

NewsWorks content partner NBC10 spoke with a police department spokesperson about the case.

According to NBC10, Officer Tanya Little said the youth posted information from his Instagram account to his Twitter feed.

“There was a lot of information there … a lot of information that was not for public viewing,” Little said Wednesday about the Instagram account.

Little said the investigation, which started Oct. 24, is ongoing because they want to determine the source of the confidential information.

“You have to think about … where did it come from?” she said. “That’s the question that has to be answered.”