PHILADELPHIA — Halim Evans didn't want any more children.

So when the then-20-year-old learned that his girlfriend was pregnant, he told her there was only one option.

"We gotta get the abortion jawn," Evans texted Teryn Johnson, 17, in July 2022. "I ain't ready for no more kids."

Johnson made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy, and later told him she was no longer pregnant. But she didn't go through with it, and when Evans found out, prosecutors say, he hired his cousin to kill her.

Through recorded prison calls, text messages, cell tower data, and more, prosecutors laid out in court this week how they say Evans and two of his cousins killed the teen in September 2022. It's a case that even the accused gunman's defense attorney said was "just about as bad as we see in Philadelphia, and we see a lot of horrific things."

On the evening of Sept. 11, 2022, prosecutors said, Evans called Johnson over FaceTime as she and a friend walked their dog through their Frankford neighborhood — then texted his cousin, Qasim Pointer, their whereabouts.

"They walking a dog," Evans wrote.

Pointer, 21, and Evans' other cousin, Jamel King, drove to Frankford from Delaware in a stolen dark green Dodge Challenger, and soon spotted the girls on the 5300 block of Horrocks Street around 8:30 p.m., said Assistant District Attorney Cydney Pope. They trailed the teens briefly, Pope said, before Pointer jumped out and shot Johnson twice in the back, killing her. She was nine weeks pregnant.

Johnson's death, amid one of the most violent years in Philadelphia history, was a cruel end to what had been a somewhat difficult life, her childhood shaped by unstable parents and exposure to domestic violence as a toddler. But her grandmother, Laura Waters, said she raised Johnson the best she could, molding her into a shy but headstrong teen who loved fashion and was looking forward to graduating high school.

Her granddaughter's death has turned her life upside down, Waters said. She finds herself replaying questions she wishes she could ask Evans:

"Why didn't you just walk away? Like you'd be the first man to walk away from a baby. Why did you have to kill her?"

'Dropping babies like flies'

When police responded to the scene, they found Johnson's phone lying next to her. In it, Homicide Detective Robert Daly quickly noticed her calls with Evans that night.

But cellphone tower data placed Evans at home in Newark, Delaware, at the time of the killing, he said. He kept digging, and amid hundreds of cellphones near the scene during the shooting, he said, he found multiple phone numbers with ties to Evans: those of Pointer and King.

Cell tower data showed King, 28, followed the same path as the getaway car — the Dodge Challenger that was later recovered — to and from shooting, he said. And while Pointer's phone appeared to be off during the crime, tower data shows it returned back to Delaware with King, and a second phone Daly attributed to him follows the same approximate path.

And then, he said, there were the prison calls.

In a series of recorded conversations, Pointer and his brother, who is serving a 70-year sentence for murder in Maryland, laid out the motive for the crime, Daly said.

"Bro, our cuz ... he been dropping babies like motherf------ flies bro," Pointer said on Sept. 7. "He dropping babies like flies but one of them he trying to trim up so I ... I mean, I don't condone this ... but like, for that paper I would do it bro."

"Bro, he like, 'I got the paper for you,'" Pointer repeated.

Daly said he believes this means Evans offered to pay Pointer to kill Johnson, though Pope said they have not found proof that money was ever exchanged.

Then, on Sept. 11, just an hour after Johnson was killed, Daly said, Pointer called his brother back with an update. Heard in the background of the call, Daly said, is King — and the distinct hum of their Dodge Challenger.

"Mission complete! Mission complete! You feel me?" Pointer said.

Daly said Pointer went on to describe the murder weapon, a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson with a back strap, in code words.

Pointer's attorney, Michael Diamondstein, called the use of the prison calls "gamesmanship" and said investigators "cherry-picked" conversations out of context. Investigators don't have sufficient evidence to prove Pointer was the one speaking on the call, he said.

"You heard words attributable to what they want them to mean," Diamondstein told a judge.

A strong-willed teen

This week, a judge ruled that prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence for the case against Pointer, King and Evans to proceed to trial on charges including murder, first-degree murder of an unborn child, and gun crimes.

Defense attorneys said that the cousins had nothing to do with Johnson's killing and that the case is circumstantial.

"There is absolutely no evidence that my client was present or involved with the homicide," Diamondstein said of Pointer.

Evans' attorney, Zak Goldstein, said that Evans wasn't "anywhere near the scene of the shooting," and that the idea he was involved is speculative and "a faulty misunderstanding of the evidence." He maintains his innocence, Goldstein said.

King's attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

It took more than a year for Pointer's preliminary hearing to go forward because he was in custody in Delaware for committing a separate shooting. He pleaded guilty to assault and illegal gun possession in that case, Pope said, and was sentenced to 12 years.

Now, he faces decades more. A trial has been tentatively scheduled for March.

Johnson's grandmother agonizes over a hope for justice for her baby, whom she raised from the age of 3. Johnson's mother struggled with addiction before dying of a fentanyl overdose in October 2021, Waters said, and her father spent most of her childhood in prison.

Despite years of therapy, those traumas affected Johnson's decisions and personal relationships, Waters said. She struggled with school, and often found herself surrounded by friends and boyfriends who weren't always looking out for her best interests, her grandmother said.

But these experiences also made her strong and independent, Waters said. She was shy, but was never afraid to stick up for herself or her beliefs.

"My baby came out with an attitude," Waters said.

Johnson, a senior at William L. Sayre High School at the time of her death, enjoyed fashion, makeup and trying new hairstyles and piercings. She was industrious and started working service jobs as soon as she was old enough, decorating clothes and shoes and reselling them to friends on the side.

Waters did not learn of her granddaughter's pregnancy until the medical examiner called months later with the news. She wonders, she said, how she might have guided Johnson as she faced pressure to have an abortion.

But she knows, she said, that no matter how much advice she offered, her granddaughter would have made a decision on her own and stuck to it.

"I know my baby," she said. "When she says she's not doing something, that's it. She's not doing it."

Evans, she said, must have known the same.

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