Mother of Roxborough High shooting victim asks judge at sentencing to let her son’s killer ‘spend a piece of his life free’

Meredith Elizalde doesn’t know exactly what she feels toward the young man who killed her only child.

Hate? No, she said. Forgiveness? Maybe — as much as one ever could. But really, she said, that is up to God.

So as she stood in court on Thursday alongside Zyhied Jones, one of the five people charged with shooting and killing her son, Nicolas, outside Roxborough High School in 2022, she asked the judge to show mercy when determining his sentence.

“Please allow Mr. Jones to spend a piece of his life free in Nick’s honor,” Elizalde told Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara McDermott.

And then she turned to Jones.

“Join me in building’s Nick’s legacy,” she said.

Even in prison, she said, Jones could treat people with kindness, work to better himself, help others, and even earn a college degree — all things Nick embodied and dreamed of.

“This court cannot bring Nick back, but it can honor his legacy,” Elizalde said.

That exchange at Jones’ sentencing on Thursday was a rare moment of compassion in Philadelphia’s criminal courthouse, from a mother who lost everything on Sept. 27, 2022.

Nick and his teammates on the Roxborough football team had just finished a scrimmage when five people with guns started shooting at the team. Jones, who was 17 at the time, was among them, there to target another 17-year-old who was leaving the game. They fired nearly 100 shots in all directions, ultimately striking five teens. Nick was shot once in the chest by a stray bullet, and died in his mother’s arms.

Elizalde, in the years since, quit her job as a teacher and moved to Montana. She endures chronic pain from the grief and trauma of watching her son die, and from severely tearing her hamstring as she sprinted up a hill to reach him after the shooting.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” she told the court. “I am in prison — the prison of a childless mother, of flashbacks to my son on the ground.”

She and her family also took the opportunity to tell Jones about the gentle person he killed — how Nick loved rescuing animals, watching Marvel movies, playing with Legos, and swimming in the pool.

Marge LaRue, Nick’s grandmother, asked Jones to show them who he really was, beyond what he did.

“Mr. Jones, who are you?” she asked. “Why were you shooting that day? Did you see Nick’s face as you fired? … Did you notice his dark curly hair, his tall, thin frame? Because Nick would have noticed all of that and more about you. … He would have been interested and curious about your life. He would have befriended you.”

She also asked Jones to name the sixth person involved in the shooting, whom police have still not identified and remains at large. Jones and the four others charged have, up until this point, refused to cooperate in the investigation.

“Do it for Nick,” LaRue said. “You owe him.”

Elizalde was not the only person Jones admitted to killing. The day before opening fire at Roxborough, he and two others ambushed 19-year-old Tahmir Jones as he stood in the doorway of his North Philadelphia home, and shot him more than 20 times. Tahmir Jones has no relation to his killer, and police said it’s not clear why he was targeted.

Theresa Guyton spoke of her son Tahmir as the glue of her family. He had perfect attendance through high school until the 12th grade, when his older brother and younger stepbrother were killed within months of each other. The grief upended his final year of school, but through therapy, he earned his GED and, just a few months before he was killed, was excelling in a construction apprenticeship program at YouthBuild. He was like a father to his nephews.

“My 4-year-old grandson calls for Tahmir every day,” Guyton said. “He asks, ‘Where is Uncle Tahmir? Is he in heaven?’”

Out of fear, her family moved out of their home immediately after the shooting, and lived in a hotel for a year as they searched for new housing they could afford. They have found some comfort in the fact that YouthBuild named a building after him, she said.

Guyton said she expected to lash out at Jones in court on Thursday. But then, she said, she saw him.

“Look at him,” she cried. “He’s a kid himself.”

Jones’ attorney, Earl Kauffman, was brief in his remarks. He said the teen’s father was in prison for most of his childhood, that he suffered from anger issues and started self-medicating with marijuana at age 14. He fell in with the wrong crowd, he said.

Jones, for his part, stood and apologized to the families.

“I’m sincerely sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry my actions caused so much pain. … I was young and arrogant. … I didn’t have self-control.”

Finally, he said: “I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me, even just a little.”

After testimony was complete, McDermott, the judge, told Jones that while she would take into account the families’ mercy and the fact that he had taken responsibility for his crimes, “there is a price that has to be paid.”

She sentenced him to 30 to 60 years in prison.

“I truly do believe you have the ability to rehabilitate,” she told him before he was escorted back to a holding cell.

The case isn’t over. Another teen who pleaded guilty to the killings this week is scheduled to be sentenced in February, while the three others are scheduled for a trial next October.

After the hearing, Jones’ family gathered outside the courthouse. His aunt and grandparents approached Guyton, she said, with apologies of their own. Guyton said she didn’t blame them — she, too, has a son in prison, and understands the complex factors that lead to violence.

There, on the sidewalk, on a cold wintry day, the families embraced. A crying grandfather, a heartbroken mother, agonizing over the one question a sentencing rarely answers: Why?

Then they parted ways — Zyhied Jones’ loved ones left to process decades without him, and Tahmir’s and Nick’s families forced to face the rest of their lives.