He threw his life away

Miles Pfeffer after being apprehended, with a “What the f(ornicate) did I do?” look on his face.

Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he’s dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away. — Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen/

Young Miles Pfeffer, a privileged punk kid and previously adjudicated delinquent who had been ‘sentenced’ to a whopping one month of probation, decided to go into Philadelphia for some harmless fun, jacking cars and petty theft. No big deal, right, just some harmless teenaged fun, right? After all, he was still a senior in high school, and what high school kid hasn’t gotten into a little trouble, right?

Miles Pfeffer, the Bucks County man who killed a Temple police officer, found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison

Miles Pfeffer clearly intended to kill Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, prosecutors said. A jury agreed.

by Chris Palmer | Wednesday, June 25, 2025 | 3:36 PM EDT | Updated: 5:27 PM EDT

A Philadelphia judge on Wednesday sentenced Miles Pfeffer to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of murder for fatally shooting Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald in 2023.

The sentence, imposed by Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn B. Bronson, capped a three-day trial that revisited a crime that had stunned the city when it happened more than two years ago.

Bronson called Pfeffer’s crime “the worst of the worst,” saying he not only cut short the life of a 31-year-old father of four, but that he’d done so in a “cold-blooded murder of a police officer.”

“The system collapses when people attack and kill police officers,” Bronson said, adding that Pfeffer killed Fitzgerald “for nothing — for no reason at all.”

The newspaper reported that it took the jury a whopping twenty minutes to convict young Mr Pfeffer of first-degree murder, weapons offenses, carjacking a Temple University student’s car, before fleeing to his mommy’s house in Bucks County.

He was apprehended the following day.

Fitzgerald had run after Pfeffer, then 18, around 7 p.m. that night while working patrol in the neighborhood. When the officer caught up to him after a brief foot chase, the two engaged in a physical struggle, at which point Pfeffer pulled a gun and shot Fitzgerald — then stood over him and fired another three rounds at his head.

The crime was captured on video, and prosecutors said the footage was clear proof that Pfeffer committed an intentional killing worthy of a first-degree murder conviction.

Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502(a), the penalty for First Degree Murder is death or life imprisonment; subsection (b) fixes the punishment as up to life imprisonment.

Many people, including some of my (electronic) Philly friends, as well as Officer Fitzgerald’s family, were outraged that the George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney, Larry Krasner, decided not to pursue the death penalty for young Mr Pfeffer, despite the fact that Mr Krasner had previously campaigned for his office on, among other things, never pursuing a capital sentence. The District Attorney played footsie with the decision, delaying the announcement in a manner which gave some hope to Officer Fitzgerald’s family, that the death penalty would be pursued, but, as I noted here, even if sentenced to death, an execution would almost certainly never be carried out.

Though the Philadelphia Inquirer story doesn’t include it, Channel 17 reported that the sentence was life without the possibility of parole, plus 22½ to 45 years on the other charges.

Mr Pfeffer was just 18 when he was apprehended on February 18, 2023, and, barring some sort of stupidity, will spend the rest of his miserable life, possibly another sixty years, if not more, behind bars.

I hope he’s tougher than he looks, because if he’s not, those long, long years are going to particularly miserable ones.