An argument between two men escalated into a fatal, roving gun battle on a suburban street, DA says

A shootout between two men late Sunday in Cheltenham left one dead and the other in jail, according to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.

Police found Wendell Allison-Haulcey, 28, of King of Prussia, lying on the ground on West Glenside Avenue near Radcliffe Road at 9:12 p.m., officials said. He had been shot in his chest and a shoulder, and was pronounced dead shortly afterward at Abington Hospital-Jefferson Health.

Kether Optimus Massiaz, 22, of Malvern, was arrested that evening and charged Monday afternoon with first- and third-degree murder and possession of an instrument of a crime, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

Massiaz traded gunfire with Allison-Haulcey late Sunday during a dispute that apparently started inside an abandoned home on West Glenside Avenue, investigators said.

The motive for that argument was unclear, and a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office declined to comment Monday.

Witnesses saw a group of men running away from the house, and a black sedan speeding away from the scene after a series of gunshots. A nearby doorbell camera recorded Allison-Haulcey raising a .45 caliber handgun and firing it once, the affidavit said. That pistol, which was registered to Allison-Haulcey, was later found next to his body, along with a spent shell casing.

Police later stopped Massiaz as he sat in his Black BMW in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven store about a mile away, the affidavit said. Massiaz, bleeding from a head wound and wearing an empty holster on his hip, told detectives he didn’t own a gun. But they later recovered a semi-automatic 9mm pistol registered to him not far from the scene of the shooting, next to a black backpack that one of the men had dropped.

It was the first homicide in the township since October 2018, when Rithina Torn was shot during a road-rage dispute. Torn’s killing remains unsolved.