Former cop gets light sentence for execution of 12-year-old boy
July 25, 2024You can access the Audio Edition on our website, or through Substack or Odysee.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – A Dominican cop has been sentenced after he was issued a sweetheart plea deal for the execution style-murder of a 12-year-old White boy, the Justice Report has learned.
For the gruesome murder, the officer, identified as 28-year-old Edsaul Mendoza, will spend only 8-20 years behind bars, a far cry from the 20-40 years prosecutors originally asked for.
Mendoza’s sentencing—which will likely see him serving only half of the relatively short bid—ends a years-long battle for justice involving the March 2022 killing of Thomas “TJ” Siderio. Siderio—who is White—was shot in the back by the Dominican cop after a foot chase in Philadelphia’s southwest neighborhood.
At the time, plainclothes police detectives riding around in an unmarked car noticed the 12-year-old Sidero was consorting with a 17-year-old wanted in a separate gun investigation. Police allege that when they approached the two youngsters, one of them fired a round, nearly missing an officer.
Former Philadelphia Police Detective Edsaul Mendoza (left) and 12-year-old Thomas “TJ” Siderio (right). Mendoza was offered a sweetheart plea deal and will spend only 8-20 years behind bars for shooting young TJ execution-style during a foot chase in 2022. Collage: Justice Report.
Mendoza then gave chase and fired a total of three times, including once point blank into the unarmed child as he lay face down in a “pushup position,” reports state. The bullet would go through Siderio’s back and out the left part of his chest, ultimately killing him.
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, a prosecutor often lambasted for his soft-on-crime stances, held little back in the case. Krasner showed evidence that Siderio died 40 feet away from the 9mm Taurus handgun that had allegedly been fired at cops. He also asserted that the 12-year-old was likely surrendering at the time of his killing.
To make matters worse, the public learned at trial that Mendoza had frantically searched for plane tickets to his homeland in the Dominican Republic and even looked up which countries were safe to flee to.
“Mr. Mendoza searched online for plane tickets from New York to the Dominican Republic, which is where he is from. About 10 days later, he performed another search for top 5 countries with no extradition treaty within the United States. At the top of the list was Cuba,” said Prosecutor Clarke Beljean.
A young friend of 12-year-old Thomas SIdero holding up a photo collage of the deceased pre-teen. Photo: Kristen Johanson, KYW Newsradio
Mendoza would eventually turn himself into custody two months later. Black Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw fired Mendoza, who served five years on the force altogether, citing a breach in PPD’s use-of-force guidelines.
While police assert that Siderio was the one to have fired the handgun originally, a lack of concrete evidence and a lawsuit from Siderio’s father contest the claim. The 12-year-old would be the youngest person to have ever been killed by a Philadelphia police officer.
“Until all that information comes to light, I still think it’s very premature and reckless to speculate that my boy even fired a gun to begin with,” said Thomas Siderio Sr. to The Times.”…for sure, the Philadelphia Police Department is unfortunately going to have to pay for the death of this child.”
Friends and family of Thomas SIdero carry his casket during a teary funeral in 2022. Photo: Philadelphia Inquirer
A jury trial for the murder would have begun this spring, but Mendoza instead pleaded guilty to the far lesser charge of third-degree murder in April. It would be the first time in Philadelphia history that a cop would be convicted of the crime, with Common Pleas Court Judge Diana Anhalt remarking, “I wish you had reacted differently, because what you did was wrong.”
Meanwhile, Siderio’s family is absolutely beside themselves from the loss of their son and claims his loss has impacted the whole community.
“It’s hard. I still don’t really believe it,” said TJ’s mother, Desirae Frame, in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer. After Mendoza’s light sentence, she and the rest of the family called it a “disgrace.”
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In life, TJ—who still believed in Santa Claus at the time of his death—was remembered as a typical 12-year-old growing up in one of America’s most rough-and-tumble urban environments. Frame said he was “rambunctious” and “stubborn” and liked to ride his bike around town.
”Still when I go to the store around the corner, I’ll see a kid…I picture (TJ) riding up to me on the bike,” said Rachelle DeSalis.
Not content with the situation, TJ’s father hopes a separate civil suit levied against the city of Philadelphia and Mendoza will bridge the obvious gap in justice that the criminal case failed to do. His suit claims that his son was killed purely as a result of “systemic policy failure and violation of civil rights.”
Desirae Frame, the mother of Thomas “TJ” Siderio. Her son was shot and killed execution-style by a Dominican cop in 34% White Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo: Jessica Griffin, Philadelphia Inquirer.
“This message goes out to the Philadelphia cop that killed my 12-year-old grandson,” said Siderio’s grandfather, Thomas Lawler III. “I want to know why you shot him in the back at point-blank? You could have tackled him. You didn’t have to shoot him.”
Philadelphia has long struggled with the sobering realities of diversity, racial conflict, and cultural strife. According to the latest US Census Report, the city of brotherly love is listed as 34.3% White alone, down from 63.8% in 1970.
Efforts to racially replace the White majority of Philadelphia have so far seen a stark rise in the city’s Black and Hispanic/Latino populations, leaving vast swaths of the area subject to gang violence, drug-related crimes, and other criminal acts.
Meanwhile, the same phenomenon is being exported nationally, with cities large and small quickly becoming the backdrop of ethnic hyper-violence that often targets the White community’s youngest and oldest members.
Earlier this month, four Black men were arrested for the gunshot murder of White teenager Brendon Berryhill on a back country road in rural Arkansas. All four suspects were arrested after some were inadvertently let go by Police, who had no idea the murder had taken place at the time.
In Massachusets, 26-year-old Cory Alvarez—a Black Haitian “asylum seeker”—was charged with raping a 15-year-old girl inside a hotel. The rape allegations came after demands he be given over to ICE custody were ignored, thanks to the area’s liberal “sanctuary city” policies that forbid officers from working with federal authorities.
In June, the country was shaken to its core following the brutal knife-murder of White 3-year-old Julian Ellis in North Olmstead, Ohio. The suspect, a mentally deranged and visibly obese Black woman identified as 32-year-old Bionca Ellis, was shockingly set free for a series of prior crimes thanks to a liberal judge who claimed to have seen “no red flags” before the stabbing.
In May, Black 33-year-old Maurice D’Antonio Chatman was arrested for murdering elderly White people in Huntsville, Alabama. Chatman’s shooting spree was said to have kicked off a lengthy SWAT standoff, which put a local neighborhood on lockdown for ten full hours.
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