A Philadelphia police officer has been charged with murder for shooting in the back a 12-year-old boy he chased following the teen shot at his vehicle, the city attorney said Monday. .
Officer Edsaul Mendoza, 26, fired from the police force in April, was arrested on Sunday and taken into custody for the death of 12-year-old Thomas Siderio in early March in a neighborhood of Philadelphia, a historic city in the Northeast of the United States between Washington and New York.
He was charged, among other things, with “premeditated murder,” Philadelphia prosecutor Larry Krasner said in a statement.
During a press conference, the authorities detailed the circumstances of the death of the young boy.
Police officer Mendoza, dressed in civilian clothes, carries out on March 1 with three other colleagues a surveillance mission in their unmarked car parked in a district of Philadelphia, a city which, like many American metropolises, is experiencing an increase in crime.
Seeing Thomas Siderio and another 17-year-old, the police decide to drive around the block. It was when they turned on their flashing light that the 12-year-old boy opened fire on their car, according to the authorities.
The police then chased the two boys on foot, one of the officers firing a shot without aiming, when Mr. Mendoza fired three times at Thomas Siderio, who fled.
But according to the prosecutor, who said he had video footage “very difficult to watch”, the teenager had already dropped his weapon “when officer Mendoza fired the third fatal shot”.
Near his victim, the policeman “knows that Thomas Siderio – 12 years old, measuring five feet tall and weighing fifty kilos – no longer has his weapon and can no longer hurt him. But he nevertheless shoots him in the back and kills him,” denounced Mr. Krasner.
In a statement relayed by the New York Times, a police union expressed its “confidence in the judicial system to protect the constitutional rights of this officer to a fair trial”.
