PHILADELPHIA—Thomas “TJ” Siderio could not escape where he came from.
That’s how one woman who described herself as a close family friend put it in an interview on Wednesday near the seventh grader’s school, hours after local police shot and killed him. Authorities said the incident began when cops took gunfire late Tuesday and pursued two people, one of whom was Siderio; the child was fatally shot once in the back as he fled.
“He just wanted somebody to care about him,” Brittany Golden told The Daily Beast, adding, “He had such a babyface.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Golden said Siderio bounced around homes after his dad went to prison; the child went briefly missing himself in 2020, police have confirmed. While authorities have offered up mixed messages about whether Siderio was the one who opened fire on police, they said the child was armed at the time they shot him.
The tragedy began around 7:20 p.m. Tuesday when four officers saw two people standing on the corner of 18th and Barbara Streets. One of them was someone they sought to question in connection with a gun investigation, police said. But when the cops turned on emergency lights, they claimed, they heard gunfire that shattered their back window.
The “projectile” that came through the window, police said, lodged in the passenger seat headrest and left a perforating hole through the glass.
During a Wednesday press briefing, Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Naish admitted that authorities could not say Siderio fired the shot into the car.
“I can’t be definitive about exactly everything at this point, but I can be definitive that a shot was fired into the police vehicle and a gun was recovered,” Naish added.
Two of the officers got out of the car and started firing at Siderio—who authorities claim was holding a semi-auto handgun equipped with a laser that had been reported stolen—before he began to run away. While pursuing the boy, an officer fired his weapon twice, striking Siderio once in the upper right back with a bullet that exited through his chest.
Naish said Wednesday he could not “get into specifics” about whether the officers told Siderio to stop or drop a weapon. He also said that none of the officers in the incident were wearing body cameras because it is not current policy for plainclothes cops to be equipped with them.
The deputy commissioner, however, argued that just because the pre-teen was fleeing “doesn’t mean that he wasn’t continuing to be a threat to the officers.”
Siderio was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:29 p.m. A spokesperson for the school district of Philadelphia told The Daily Beast Siderio was in seventh grade at George W. Sharswood Elementary School.
“He is in school but he never goes,” Golden said across the street from Sharswood on Wednesday afternoon.
Jimmy Callsen, another close family friend, told The Daily Beast that Siderio “had it rough from the start” and “never had a chance,” describing him as prone to violence.
Police said the individual with Siderio, identified as a 17-year-old male, was briefly detained before ultimately being released. Callsen said he believed the 17-year-old was a relative, and Golden suggested the gun described by police was a recent acquisition.
“He’s had it a few weeks and was showing it off,” she told The Daily Beast.
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said the Philly PD Internal Affairs Unit was conducting an investigation into the incident, and officers who took part in the fatal shooting have been placed on administrative leave. Police said one of the officers was injured by the shattered glass and was hospitalized and later released.
“The School District of Philadelphia is heartbroken over the tragic shooting of one of our students. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family members, friends and school community who are grieving this loss,” a spokesperson said. “We have made counseling and support services available for those who may need assistance coping or who wish to talk about what happened.”
Around 7 p.m. on the corner of 18th and Barbara, about two-dozen young people gathered for a quiet memorial in honor of their friend. Clusters of black balloons hung from fence posts and candles were lit in TJ’s memory. The smell of burning marijuana filled the air.
“Don’t take no pictures,” said one teen, who could barely contain his rage.
