Robert Davis crawled through his family home window and asked for help before surrendering to police

After more than two weeks on the run, Robert Davis returned to his family’s South Philadelphia home, sneaked inside through a back window, and asked his brothers for help.

He arrived Wednesday night acting erratically, said Davis’ older brother Jaylin Reason, and appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. His mother, Damica Davis, said her 19-year-old son was having a mental breakdown, fearful of the reality he’d come to face: murder charges for allegedly killing Philadelphia journalist Josh Kruger earlier this month.

While trying to calm Davis down, Reason said, they got into a fight. He realized, he said, that the best assistance he could offer his brother was helping him surrender to police.

“I didn’t want him to keep living outside and going around and doing something to put himself in a deeper hole,” he said.

» READ MORE: Family of man wanted for killing Josh Kruger says the 19-year-old and the journalist shared sex and drugs

Reason calmed Davis down, he said, then asked his other brother to call the police. Together, they went outside, sat on the steps, and waited for 17th District officers to arrive. Davis surrendered and was taken into custody.

On Thursday, he was charged with murder, illegal gun possession, tampering with evidence, and related crimes, and is being held without bail.

On Oct. 2, police say, Davis entered Kruger’s home in the middle of the night, then shot him multiple times at the base of his stairs. Kruger ran outside screaming for help, before collapsing. Police rushed him to the hospital, where he died a short time later.

Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said Davis “may have tampered with some evidence in trying to conceal what had occurred,” but declined to share additional details, citing the ongoing investigation.

Reason said Davis had said he wanted to tell police everything, including the troubling details that he and Kruger, 39, had been in a sex and drug-fueled relationship since Davis was just 15. But Reason told his brother not to say anything to law enforcement officials until the family got him a lawyer.

A source with knowledge of the investigation said that as of early Thursday morning Davis had not spoken to detectives. Vanore declined to comment on what, if anything, Davis has said to police.

Kruger was a well-known freelance journalist and advocate for the LGBTQ community and people experiencing homelessness and addiction. Much of his advocacy and writing stemmed from his own experiences as a gay man living with HIV who spent years living on the streets, addicted to crystal meth.

Damica Davis says that her son, too, is a victim — a notion that could become a central theme in any potential trial. She said she is working to find him a lawyer with the support of some LGBTQ and racial justice activists who had offered to help her son.

She and Reason said that when Davis was 15, he told his family he was seeing an “older white woman” he met online who “worked for the government.” He would sneak out of the house, then return in the early morning hours, often high on drugs and with expensive gifts, like designer belts and pants, which he told them were gifts from the woman, they said.

Davis became addicted to meth, which exacerbated his ongoing mental health troubles, his mother and brother said, and his life quickly spiraled.

They frequently saw the name “Josh” pop up on his phone, they said, but when they asked who Josh was, Davis told them it was the woman’s brother, who was gay.

But in time, they said Davis told them the truth: There was no woman — he had been seeing Kruger all along.

And when Davis called his mother just days after the crime, she said he told her Kruger had been threatening to post sexually explicit videos of him online.

“He said ‘... He wanted me to do some stuff I didn’t want to do, and if I didn’t do it, he said he was going to blackmail me,’” she said in recent interviews.

The family said that Wednesday was the first time they’d seen Davis since he went on the lam Oct. 6. Since police issued a warrant for his arrest, they said, they haven’t heard from or spoken with police, and have reached out to the assigned homicide detective but haven’t heard back.

“I just want to be there for him the best way I can,” Damica Davis said, “to let him know that he’s not alone and we support him.”

Davis was arraigned on the charges Thursday afternoon. A preliminary hearing has been tentatively scheduled for Nov. 13.

Staff writer Chris Palmer contributed to this article.