A former Philadelphia police officer is on trial for murder because he killed shooting in the back A twelve-year-old boy who chased because the teenager opened fire on a car without insignia, the prosecutor of the big city announced yesterday Monday.
The ex police officer Enchaul Mendoza, 26, who was deported in April, was arrested Sunday and remanded in custody in connection with the death of 12-year-old Thomas Cinterio in early March in the Philadelphia (Northeast, Washington-New York) borough. .
He was charged, among other things, with “premeditated murder,” Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said in a statement.
During a press conference, authorities provided details about the circumstances of the teenager’s death.
Officer Mendoza, a politician, was involved in a March 1 surveillance with three other colleagues in an unmarked car parked in a suburb of Philadelphia, a city that, like many other US metropolises, is experiencing a rise in crime.
When they saw Thomas Sinterio and another 17-year-old teenager, the police decided to stop them for a check. When they lit a lighthouse, the 12-year-old shot at their car, according to authorities.
The police then started chasing the two children on foot. A policeman threw without aiming. Mr. Mendoza fired three shots at the 12-year-old, who was running to escape.
However, according to the prosecutor, who said that there was a video “very difficult to watch”, the teenager had already thrown the gun and had fallen face down “when police officer Mendoza threw the third fatal shot».
At a distance from the victim, the police officer “already knew that Thomas Sinterio – 12 years old, 1.50 meters tall and weighing 50 kilograms – no longer carried a weapon and could not harm him. “But he still shot him in the back and killed him,” said Krasner.
In a statement reproduced by the New York Times, the police union expressed “its confidence in justice for the protection of the constitutional rights of this police officer in a fair and impartial trial”.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
