Philadelphia cop who shot and killed 12-year-old from less than 10 feet away is charged with murder

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A fired Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed a 12-year-old boy was arrested and charged with murder, the district attorney’s office announced on Monday. In fact, the officer, Edsaul Mendoza, was being held without bond, charged with first degree murder, third degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, and possession of an instrument of crime in the death of Thomas “TJ” Siderio, according to the office of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.

Krasner said in an initial statement that Siderio was killed on March 1 in the Girard Estates section of the city. What he didn’t confirm at the time—the heartbreaking details of the case—he later released at a news conference on Monday and with an unsealed jury presentation from the investigating grand jury.

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Siderio was with a 17-year-old friend, NK, on the day of his death, and they were riding their bikes at about 7:30 PM when Philadelphia officers in an unmarked car and plain clothes “initiated a pedestrian stop” on the boys because they suspected NK was connected to a stolen firearm investigation involving someone named Santo Primerano, according to a summary in the jury presentation. Kwaku Sarpong, the officer driving the undercover car on the scene that day, pulled over and activated emergency lights and as he did so a shot was fired, hitting the rear window of the car.

Siderio and his friend took off running, eventually separating, the grand jury found. Mendoza was chasing Siderio, who was initially carrying a gun, according to the jury presentation, but it was the officer who fired at Siderio. “He fired at Thomas Siderio a total of three times,” the grand jury wrote. “His first shot was at the bottom of the block, near the intersection of 18th and Barbara Streets. He fired his second shot, mid-block, after Thomas Siderio had discarded his gun.

“Unarmed, Thomas Siderio then stopped running, and either fell or dove to the ground. PO Mendoza then fired his third shot from less than ten feet away from the child, and fatally wounded him.”

After the shooting, Mendoza’s partner asked him where the gun the child was carrying was, and Mendoza responded, “somewhere around there,” the grand jury wrote.

“When Officer Mendoza fired the third and fatal shot, he knew the 12-year-old, five-foot-tall, 111-pound Thomas Siderio no longer had a gun and no ability to harm him,” Krasner said during his news conference. “But he fired a shot through his back nonetheless that killed him.”

Thomas was not the subject of the officers’ investigation, according to the grand jury. They stopped him despite department directives requiring that “police officers in plainclothes and detectives will not routinely make traffic stops unless the actions of the violator are a clear danger to pedestrian or vehicular traffic and no marked unit is readily available.”

“None of the CIU Officers had seen either of the boys in possession of a gun when they made the decision to conduct the pedestrian stop and none of them saw the boys involved in any criminal activity,” the grand jury found. “Nothing either boy did, before the initiation of the stop, required the CIU Officers to initiate the stop in an unmarked car with officers in plainclothes.”

Officers even cited conflicting reasons for initiating the stop. Alexander Camacho and Robert Cucinelli, who were riding in the unmarked car with Sarpong and Mendoza, testified that they were making the stop in relation to the stolen firearm investigation. Sarpong and Sgt. Vincent Butler testified that the officers stopped the boys for riding their bikes in the wrong direction on the street, according to the grand jury.

Attorney and legal analyst Rebecca Kavanagh called Thomas’ death, which was captured on neighbors’ doorbell cameras, an execution. Officers weren’t wearing body cameras, Kavanagh said.

“If ever there were a case that warranted the word execution, this is it,” she tweeted. “Mendoza didn’t just shoot 12-year-old TJ in the back as he was running away [altho he did that]; when TJ fell to the ground, he stopped, stood over him and shot him dead.”