A 14-year-old boy shot a man who attacked his mother during a robbery at a Spring Garden pizza shop, police say

» UPDATE (Dec. 16, 2021): Surveillance video of this incident shared on social media appears to contradict portions of the initial account shared by police, including the assertion that the man who was shot had tried to strangle the mother of the teenager who ended up shooting him in the face. Read more here.

A 14-year-old boy shot a would-be robber in the face Thursday night because the man started to strangle the boy’s mother while attempting to steal cash from a Spring Garden pizza shop, according to police.

Authorities said the robbery suspect came into Bold Pizza on the 1500 block of Spring Garden Street a little before 9:47 p.m. and tried to reach over the counter and take money out of the register. That prompted a physical struggle between the robbery suspect and an employee, police said, and the suspect “started to strangle” the employee — the teen’s mother.

The teen then grabbed a handgun from under a counter, police said, and shot the robbery suspect once in the face. Police said the gun was legally owned by the teen’s father.

Police did not identify the teen, his mother, or the robbery suspect.

Officers who responded were able to follow a trail of blood from the pizza shop toward the Broad Street Line’s Spring Garden stop, where several passersby said a man was bleeding from the face. Officers found the robbery suspect on the subway concourse and took him to Jefferson Hospital, where he was placed in critical condition, police said.

Authorities did not say whether either the robbery suspect or the teen would face charges. But they said the suspect may be connected to another attempted robbery that happened just minutes earlier Thursday night.

Around 9:43 p.m., police said, three men walked into a CVS half a block from Bold Pizza, at 490 N. Broad Street, and demanded cash from the register. The cashier said she couldn’t open the registers without a code, police said, at which point one of the three men threatened to shoot her.

Another one of the men then pulled a register drawer out and threw it on the ground, police said. Police said nothing was taken, and the three men left the store.

Authorities were still trying to identify the other two men involved in the attempted robbery at the CVS. It was not immediately clear why only one of them was apparently involved in the pizza shop incident.

Calls to Bold Pizza went unanswered Friday, and attempts to reach employees were unsuccessful.