Beer pong game and a taunt lead to slaying and charges

By Anthony R. Wood INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Posted: May 05, 2009

After they got into a dispute over a beer-pong game, Joseph Jimenez, 24, and Scott Riley, 25, met in a Bridgeport alleyway and Riley made a dare, investigators said.

"Shoot me, shoot me," Riley said to Jimenez and a companion. "You guys ain't got the . . . "

Jimenez accepted the challenge, police said, and yesterday he was being held without bail at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility on murder and related charges pending a hearing next Monday.

The Montgomery County District Attorneys' office gave the following account:

Late Friday night, Jimenez and Riley were inside a house in the 100 block of West Second Street playing beer pong, a drinking game in which participants attempt to throw ping-pong balls into cups of beer. When they succeed, members of the other team have to drink the beer. They began quarreling, a witness said.

Jimenez told police that just before the shooting, he left the house through the front door while Riley and a companion went out the back. They met in the alley.

That's when Riley issued his challenge. Jimenez then took out a silver Taurus .40 caliber handgun, shot him in the neck and fled. He then dumped the gun into a trash can, police said.

Police arrested Jimenez near the scene and found the gun, which state police determined he owned.

Riley was taken to Montgomery Hospital after the shooting, which occurred at 11:40 p.m., and pronounced dead.

Contact staff writer Anthony R. Wood at 610-313-8210 or twood@phillynews.com.