Police Fatally Shot A 12-Year-Old Boy In The Back After A Bullet Struck A Cop Car

Police killings are not things that are going away they are things that are hap­pen­ing dai­ly in America, made pos­si­ble by behold­en pros­e­cu­tors, and politi­cians and rub­ber-stamped by courts.
The pro-killer cop sup­port­ers believe that police can con­tin­ue to mur­der lit­tle black and brown boys or even grown men and women and their chil­dren will remain unscathed, unfor­tu­nate­ly, that is not how the world works.
Again I invoke the words of Martin Niemoller as I have done ever so often in my articles.

First, they came for the social­ists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade union­ists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

Police in Philadelphia fatal­ly shot a 12-year-old boy in the back moments after a bul­let struck an unmarked police car on Tuesday evening. The vic­tim, iden­ti­fied as Thomas Siderio, was pro­nounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center min­utes after he was shot while alleged­ly hold­ing a gun and run­ning away from two offi­cers, police said. Authorities described him as a white male. “The life of a young man was cut trag­i­cal­ly short, and we should all be ques­tion­ing how we as a soci­ety have failed him and so many oth­er young peo­ple like him,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said in a state­ment Wednesday. In her state­ment, Outlaw said that “a young child with a gun in their hand pur­pose­ly fired a weapon at our offi­cers and by mir­a­cle, none of the offi­cers suf­fered life-threat­en­ing injuries.” However, Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Naish said Wednesday that police were still inves­ti­gat­ing who fired at the vehi­cle, the Associated Press report­ed. He also could not say if Siderio was point­ing a gun at the police vehi­cle while fleeing.

Now comes the cop-splain­ing in an attempt to jus­ti­fy murder

Just because the vic­tim was run­ning away from the police and was shot in the back, Naish said, “does­n’t mean that he was­n’t con­tin­u­ing to be a threat to the offi­cer. None of the four offi­cers were wear­ing body cam­eras, author­i­ties said.

The offi­cers have been placed on admin­is­tra­tive duty fol­low­ing what Outlaw promised will be a “fair and thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion” into the case. The inci­dent began when four plain­clothes offi­cers were in an unmarked vehi­cle around 7:24 p.m. on Tuesday in South Philadelphia as part of a task force inves­ti­gat­ing unlaw­ful firearms pos­ses­sion. They observed Siderio stand­ing in a cor­ner with a teenag­er who was want­ed for ques­tion­ing in the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, police said in a press release. The offi­cers drove toward the two indi­vid­u­als and acti­vat­ed the vehicle’s emer­gency lights.
“At that point, they heard gun­fire and glass shat­ter­ing from the rear pas­sen­ger win­dow,” police said. The bul­let struck the inner door­frame, went through the passenger’s head­rest, and stopped in the vehicle’s headliner.
The offi­cer sit­ting in the rear pas­sen­ger seat was struck by shards of glass in his face and eyes, accord­ing to the police.
Two oth­er offi­cers got out of the vehi­cle and began fir­ing at Siderio; author­i­ties said he was hold­ing a gun as he ran away. One of the offi­cers fired his gun twice at Siderio, strik­ing the boy in the upper right back with the bul­let exit­ing his left chest. Siderio was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal and pro­nounced dead at 7:29 p.m. on Tuesday.

The offi­cer hit by the glass was treat­ed at a hos­pi­tal and released. No oth­er offi­cers or civil­ians were injured.
In footage from a door­bell cam­era in the area, obtained by CBS Philly, one of the offi­cers appears to say, “I’m bleed­ing!” Police ques­tioned the 17-year-old who was with Siderio but lat­er released him.
“What I heard was when the cops pulled up in an unmarked car, they thought some­one was jump­ing them because they slammed on the brakes. So the kid shot because he thought some­body was going to shoot him,” the teenager’s step­fa­ther, Salman Khan, told Action News. Police alleged that the gun Siderio was hold­ing was a Taurus 9 mm semi­au­to­mat­ic hand­gun that had been stolen. The vic­tim was a sev­enth-grad­er at George W. Sharswood Elementary School. The school did not reply to BuzzFeed News’ request for com­ment. Siderio was report­ed miss­ing in 2020 when he was 11 years old, but he was found days lat­er. In a state­ment to BuzzFeed News, Keisha Hudson of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, said, “While we real­ize that not all the facts are in, we’re deeply trou­bled by reports of a twelve-year-old child being shot in the back by police. Because police nar­ra­tives in these sit­u­a­tions are often incom­plete and ever-chang­ing, (e.g., the ini­tial reports of George Floyd’s death being a med­ical con­di­tion), we call on the police depart­ment and the dis­trict attorney’s office to con­duct a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into this shoot­ing and to be respon­sive and trans­par­ent with the public.”