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Keith Gibson Is Sentenced to Seven Life Terms Plus 296 Years for a Deadly 2021 Delaware Spree

Declared a habitual offender, the Philadelphia man was sentenced for killing Leslie Ruiz-Basilio and Ronald Wright. Four Philadelphia murder charges were still pending.

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Illustration: an empty defendant's chair at the defense table facing the bench

The security camera inside a Metro PCS store on Kirkwood Highway in Elsmere, Delaware, recorded the last moments of Leslie Ruiz-Basilio's life on May 15, 2021. A gunman confronted her, took her to the back of the store and shot her in the head at point-blank range while her arms were raised. He walked out with cash and cellphones and drove off in her SUV, which turned up later in Philadelphia near the home of Keith Gibson. She was 28.

On Wednesday, March 13, 2024, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced that Gibson, 41, of Philadelphia, had been declared a habitual offender and sentenced in New Castle County Superior Court to seven life terms plus 296 years in prison. The sentence, imposed by Superior Court Judge Ferris Wharton, covered 22 convictions, among them four counts of murder in the deaths of two people: Ruiz-Basilio and Ronald Wright, 42.

Wright was killed less than a month after Ruiz-Basilio, in his Wilmington home, which prosecutors described as a known drug house; Gibson was later found with a shoulder bag in which, prosecutors said, Wright had kept his drugs. Over the following three days, Gibson robbed or assaulted three more people. On June 6, the day after Wright was killed, a gunman's first shot missed a teenage store clerk, who lay on the floor of his store pretending to be dead. After stealing several items, the gunman shot him in the head, then turned on his way out and shot him again. The clerk survived and testified at Gibson's trial.

The end came after the robbery of a Rite Aid in Wilmington, where a clerk handed over a bundle of cash with a GPS tracking device inside. Police arrested Gibson on June 8, 2021. He was wearing body armor and carrying unusual ammunition that prosecutors said was consistent with bullet fragments found at both murder scenes. A revolver that prosecutors said was used in the shootings was hidden near the spot where he was caught. Investigators had already found his phone number in the data on one of the cellphones stolen from the Elsmere store, recovered when police arrested another man who had it.

A jury convicted Gibson in November 2023 of four counts of murder, attempted murder, four counts of robbery, gun charges, conspiracy, theft of a motor vehicle, wearing body armor during a felony and possession of a firearm by a person prohibited. Prosecutors leaned heavily on surveillance video of the shootings of Ruiz-Basilio and the store clerk, and on ballistics evidence that they said linked the Ruiz-Basilio and Wright shootings to the revolver. Clothing and a bicycle of Gibson's found near the cellphone store also pointed to him, prosecutors said, and a friend identified him as the man in the footage. The defense presented no evidence and called no witnesses, arguing instead that no DNA or fingerprints tied Gibson to the crimes.

Authorities say the violence began soon after Gibson walked out of a Delaware prison in December 2020, having served about 13 years for manslaughter and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. "He was armed and wearing a bulletproof vest when law enforcement arrested him, and it is difficult to fathom how much more destruction he would have caused had he not been apprehended," Jennings said.

Philadelphia was still waiting for its turn. District Attorney Larry Krasner had approved murder charges against Gibson in the killings of his mother and a doughnut shop manager, and in the deaths of two men found shot in the head at a store in the city's Germantown neighborhood. The manager, Christine Lugo, 40, had been confronted by a gunman as she opened a Dunkin' shop in North Philadelphia on the same day Wright was shot; police say Gibson pushed her inside, took about $300 and shot her in the head. A spokeswoman for Krasner said Gibson would be extradited to face those charges, though no timeline had been set. In March 2024 they were still only charges.

The date of the sentencing hearing itself is not settled in the reports. The attorney general announced the sentence on Wednesday, March 13, 2024, and NBC10's report that day placed the sentencing on Wednesday; an Associated Press report published the next morning said the judge had imposed the sentence the previous week.

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