According to authorities and court records, the man who shot and killed a 12-year-old boy two years ago was given a sentence of eight to twenty years in jail for third-degree murder on Monday.
Edsaul Mendoza shot Thomas “TJ” Siderio in the back on March 1, 2022, and prosecutors asked the judge to give him a 20–40-year prison term.
At a news conference, prosecutor Clarke Beljean said that one reason for this was that Mendoza looked online for plane tickets to the Dominican Republic, where he has family, soon after the shooting that killed the man.
More than a week later, Mendoza looked online for places that don’t have deals with the U.S. for extradition and found that Cuba didn’t. It was then that he looked for plane tickets, Beljean said.
Beljean described the killing as a “shocking crime.”
Mendoza, who is 28 years old, was charged with first-degree murder, third-degree murder, voluntary killing, and having a tool for a crime.
He agreed to plead guilty as part of a deal with the prosecutors that he would get a term that followed the guidelines for sentencing for third-degree murder, which say that the minimum sentence is 7½ years.
From April to May, Mendoza admitted to killing someone.
Beljean said, “That was a fair, just, and equitable sentence in this case.” He also said that TJ never had his day in court.
“He shot TJ Siderio in the back and got all the benefits of the criminal justice system that TJ didn’t get,” he said.
The grand jury was shown proof that Mendoza fired three shots at the teenager. The teenager then pointed a gun at an unmarked police car, which made several plainclothes officers duck for cover, according to the charges.
Authorities say that two of Mendoza’s three shots were fired after TJ threw away a gun.
The boy had stopped running and was on his knees when he was hit in the back, according to Beljean. Soon after the shooting, police said Mendoza would be fired for breaking the department’s rules on the use of force by doing things like using too much force.
