Killer to serve lifetime in prison

Damien Walker, 35, pleaded guilty to slaying 62-year-old Faith Price

BUCKS COUNTY » A 35-year-old Sellersville man has been sentenced to life in prison after he admitted Thursday to the gruesome slaying of a 62-year-old woman who lived in an apartment next to him last year.

Damien J. Walker, of the 100 block of North Main Street, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the early September killing of Faith Price and was handed a life sentence by Judge Rea Boylan, according to information provided by the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office.

Authorities said that on the night of Sept. 6, 2016, Walker showed up at Norristown police

headquarters and told an officer there that he had killed Price while he was high on methamphetamine.

Perkasie police went to the victim’s apartment and, after discovering the front door was locked, pried it open and once inside found Price deceased on a bed in the rear bedroom with a large amount of blood pooled around her head and more blood on a wall, according to court documents. Her head and

upper body were partially covered by a bedspread and pillow, police said, and her wrists had been slashed with what looked like a boxcutter blade.

Price was dead for one or two days before Walker turned himself in, investigators later concluded.

An autopsy determined Price died of blunt-force trauma and asphyxia. Medical examiners found that she had extensive bruising on her body, including around her neck, and that she suffered a brain injury consistent with her head being struck against a hard object, authorities

said, adding that the wrist cuts were likely made after she died.

DNA evidence confirmed Walker’s involvement in the murder, the District Attorney’s Office said.

Walker never explained his motive for the crime, authorities said, but he apologized to Price’s family in court, claiming that “no words can describe the shame and sorrow that I feel.”

Walker was still incarcerated at Bucks County jail Thursday while awaiting transfer to state prison to begin serving his life sentence.