Two Philly Police officers were shot, one fatally, while trying to stop a car theft at the airport

Two Philadelphia Police officers were shot, one of them fatally, and an 18-year-old was also killed when the officers tried to stop a group of people from stealing a car at an airport parking garage Thursday night and at least one of the suspects started shooting, officials said Friday.

The incident left Officer Richard Mendez, 50, dead from several gunshot wounds, and injured Officer Raul Ortiz, 60, Interim Commissioner John Stanford said at a news conference Friday evening.

The teen who was shot — Jesus Herman Madera Duran — was driven by one of his associates to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was dropped onto the floor of a parking garage before the driver sped away, officials said. Duran, of Camden, was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Hours later, in South Brunswick, N.J. — about 60 miles from Philadelphia — police recovered the Dodge Durango that the group had used to flee from the crime scene and the hospital, officials said. The vehicle, which had been reported stolen about a week ago, was burned out on the side of the road. Authorities were searching it for potential evidence.

Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said police were continuing to look for as many as three suspects who may have fled in the SUV. He did not describe them, or say where police thought they might be, but said investigators were using evidence including ballistics, videos, and forensics to try to pull the case together.

“Everything we can touch, there’s people working to identify the individuals,” Vanore said.

The details provided a clearer view of a crime that happened late Thursday night and left many in the department and the city shaken. President Joe Biden mentioned it while visiting the city for an unrelated event, saying: “They put their lives on the line to protect this community. We owe them our gratitude, and we pray for their families.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro added: “I know words cannot express my anger and sadness nor any of yours, and I know we all join in collective prayer for our fallen police officer and for every single woman and man who puts on that uniform.”

The shooting marked the 10th time that a law enforcement officer has been shot in the city this year — and the second time an officer has died after being shot while on duty. Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald was killed in February while seeking to make a pedestrian stop following reports of carjackings and robberies near campus.

Stanford also noted that Thursday’s shooting came amid a string of recent hardships for the department: Three officers were wounded in Rhawnhurst while responding to a domestic violence call last week, he said, and two commanders died this week, one by suicide, the other due to a medical emergency.

A visibly beleaguered Mayor Jim Kenney called Thursday’s crime “devastating,” and he choked up when recalling time he spent with Mendez’s family overnight.

“It’s just devastation,” Kenney said Friday morning, after speaking at the Philadelphia Fire Department’s Firefighter of the Year award ceremony. “You walk into a room with ... the police commissioner, and they didn’t even know that their family member and husband had passed. That first reaction from them, [it] just stays with you. It’s really bad.”

Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 president John McNesby called Mendez a department standout who was widely admired by his colleagues. Department officials said Mendez, a 22-year veteran of the department, was married and had a daughter, and that Ortiz — who has spent 20 years on the force — was married with three children.

Mendez, of Somerton, spent many years as a beat cop in the 25th District, patrolling some of the city’s most violent neighborhoods in North Philadelphia. He had been reassigned to the Airport Unit in recent years — widely considered a low-stress detail where cops could spend a few years winding down before retirement.

“I saw more tears last night than I’ve ever seen in all my years here,” McNesby said, speaking outside the lodge’s headquarters Friday. His union and a variety of donors were offering a reward of more than $180,000 for information that leads to the arrest of any suspects.

Some key details about the case remained unclear Friday. Vanore said he wasn’t sure who had fired the shots, for example, and he said Mendez’s gun was missing.

He also said the parking garage, at Philadelphia International Airport’s Terminal D, was not equipped with surveillance cameras. And he said that although authorities had recovered a tracking device from the stolen Durango, it was located on the side of I-95 in Northeast Philadelphia, miles from either the airport or where the SUV was ultimately found.

At the airport, the department had warned in recent months of the growing threat of armed car thieves in parking lots. Police for months had been cracking down on a ring of thieves who had been boosting cars from rental lots. And so far this year, 112 cars have been stolen from the Philadelphia airport, a spike of 5,500% from the same time in 2019, when just two incidents of stolen cars were reported. About one-third of this year’s car thefts were reported as having been stolen from an airport garage.

Stanford also noted that the frequency with which officers had been shot this year has come as the city continues to experience high levels of gun violence overall. While saying he did not want to engage in finger-pointing, he nonetheless attributed some of that criminal behavior to what he called a lack of accountability across the criminal justice system and in the courts.

“I think the brazen behavior, coming out of COVID and civil unrest and folks not being held accountable in this city, in terms of how they commit crimes and the response to that, I think has emboldened individuals,” he said.

Heather Redfern, the airport’s public affairs manager, said the Department of Homeland Security had increased its presence in public areas Friday, and that the Police Department had increased its patrols at the airport in recent months.

The shooting occurred in a terminal where about 1,500 passengers and employees pass through between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. on a typical day, officials said, and there were 1,341 cars parked in Garage D between midnight Thursday and 8:30 a.m. Friday.

As for Thursday’s shooting, Stanford and Vanore gave this account of what happened:

The incident began just after 11 p.m. in the Terminal D parking garage. Mendez and Ortiz, who were off duty but about to start their shift, heard glass shattering in the garage and decided to try to intervene in what they believed to be a possible car theft.

Mendez was in full uniform, while Ortiz was in police pants and a sweatshirt.

The officers saw three or four people attempting to break into the car, and when the officers tried to stop them, a confrontation followed and led to gunshots.

Vanore said it was unclear who was shooting, or even how many people opened fire. Mendez was struck several times in the upper torso, while Ortiz was struck in the arm. Both were taken to area hospitals; Mendez was pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center at 11:34 p.m., while Ortiz was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in stable condition.

The suspects then fled from the scene in the stolen Durango. And shortly thereafter, the driver of the Durango dropped Duran off at CHOP. He was pronounced dead shortly after 11:30 p.m.

Police later discovered that Mendez’s service weapon was missing from his holster, and Vanore said authorities still aren’t sure where it is.

By Friday evening, police had released a partial video of the hospital drop-off in an attempt to solicit tips about who may have been inside.

Detectives, meanwhile, were continuing to search for evidence connected to the crime scene, the car, and the suspects. Kenney said the city will fly all flags at half-mast for the next 30 days.

Stanford said the case was a “very heartbreaking incident, devastating incident,” not only for the department, but for the city, especially given the seemingly senseless nature of the crime.

“To know that this is the type of behavior that’s occurring,” he said. “The type of individuals that are out there on the street — to take someone’s life over a vehicle that didn’t belong to them.”

Staff writers Chris Brennan, Jesse Bunch, Ariana Perez-Castells, Nick Vadala, Juliana Feliciano Reyes, Dylan Purcell, and graphics editor John Duchneskie contributed to this article.