Elkins Park woman killed in a Dunkin’ drive-thru was the victim of a murder-for-hire plot fueled by a love triangle, prosecutors say
Rachel King, 35, was killed in front of her 11-year-old son, prosecutors said. Julie Jean and Zakkee Alhakim are charged with first- and third-degree murder in her death.
The trial of two people accused of killing an Elkins Park woman in front of her 11-year-old son began Monday with prosecutors describing how a bitter love triangle inspired a murder-for-hire plot.
Julie Jean recruited Zakkee Alhakim to stalk and fatally shoot Rachel King, 35, as she was stopped in a Dunkin’ drive-thru last spring, according to Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Caroline Goldstein.
Jean, 35, and Alhakim, 34, are charged with first- and third-degree murder in the death of King, a teacher at Grover Cleveland Mastery Charter School. Jean, they said, hired Alhakim to kill King, a romantic rival.
Defense attorneys, however, took turns in their opening statements attempting to dismantle that narrative.
Shaka Johnson, who is representing Jean, railed against King’s fiancé, William Hayes, who was cheating on her with Jean during a break in their on-and-off relationship. Johnson called Hayes a “two-timer” who uprooted the lives of Jean and her three children by moving them from Tioga to Linwood Gardens, the apartment complex where King and Hayes lived.
“Julie wasn’t having an affair,” Johnson said. “Julie met a guy who is a liar, a guy who was between situations.”
Alhakim’s attorney, Benjamin Cooper, told the panel that the prosecution’s entire case was built on circumstantial evidence, and that nothing directly connected his client to King’s slaying: No DNA evidence, no eyewitness identification, and not even the murder weapon, which was never recovered.
But Goldstein was adamant in her message to the jury. The only connection between Alhakim and King, she said, was Jean. And it was Jean, the lawyer said, who hired the shooter to attack King, even buying him the gun he fired and vehicle he drove to the fatal ambush.
“But for Julie Jean and Zakkee Alhakim, Rachel King would be here today,” she said. “Instead, she was murdered on April 11, 2023 in front of her 11-year-old son.”
» READ MORE: Family of Rachel King, a Philadelphia teacher killed in a Dunkin’ drive-thru shooting, hopes for ‘swift justice’
When King found out about Hayes’ infidelity in 2022, Goldstein said, she urged him to end it. Afterward, Jean began to harass Hayes, the lawyer said, calling him multiple times and tapping on his apartment window. She also contacted King and visited her at work.
Eventually, Hayes obtained a protection from abuse order against Jean. But, Johnson, her attorney, said that was merely an attempt to placate King and demonstrate his commitment to her.
“This wasn’t about safety,” Johnson said. “It was a sham, an act to the one he wanted to be with.”
Johnson said Jean was not a “black widow or a homewrecker.” When she found out Hayes was in a romantic relationship with another woman, she wanted to speak with him, and was frustrated that he was ignoring her calls.
Two months after the protection-from-abuse order was issued, Jean contacted Alhakim, who is the cousin of the father of her children.
For months, Jean and Alhakim communicated via text, and Jean sent him pictures of King and gave himinstructions on how to get to her apartment. The two also traveled together to a house in Kensington where, prosecutors said, Jean gave Alhakim money to buy a polymer, untraceable “ghost gun.”
She also bought a used Mercury Sable for Alhakim, who did not have a valid driver’s license.
On the day of the murder, surveillance footage recorded Alhakim closely tailing King as she drove her son, Jalen, to violin practice, following her into the Melrose Shopping Center on East Cheltenham Avenue, where King pulled into a Dunkin’ drive-thru.
As King waited in the line of cars, Alhakim approached the driver’s side of her Ford Edge, and fired six shots into the vehicle, hitting King five times. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Her son was uninjured.
Cheltenham Police Officer Stephanie Pappas testified Monday that Jalen said the gunman had come up to the car and started shooting for no reason. The boy also pleaded with Pappas and other officers to take his mother to the hospital, wondering why no one was helping her.
Alhakim, meanwhile, sped away in the Mercury Sable.
Philadelphia police recognized the car from a murder in the city that had taken place days earlier. In that case, James Farrell, 35, was found April 7 shot multiple times on the 5100 block of North Broad Street.
Hours after King’s murder, city police officers saw the Sable in Logan, and attempted to pull it over.
Alhakim led the city officers on a high-speed chase, ultimately crashing the car into a fence. After Alhakim was taken into custody, investigators determined that Farrell and King had been killed by the same gun. That weapon was never recovered.
When detectives searched Alhakim’s cell phone after his arrest, they found photos of an untraceable “ghost gun” assembled from a kit that they believe was used in both shootings, as well as pictures of King and other correspondence with Jean.
The trial is expected to last through Thursday before Montgomery County Court Judge William Carpenter.