The short, tumultuous life of Thomas ‘TJ’ Siderio

By December 2016, Thomas “TJ” Siderio already had more days behind him than ahead. He still believed in Santa Claus.

Photos taken a few weeks before Christmas that year show the 7-year-old talking with the white-bearded man, albeit a bit tentatively.

In the years that followed, TJ’s life would come to a rolling boil, fueled by bad influences and bad decisions as he cruised the streets of South Philly on a bicycle.

Soon, he started breaking curfew, and by the spring of 2020, police had to put out a bulletin when he went missing for days.

Be on the lookout, they advised, for an 11-year-old with short brown hair and a small scar on his right cheek. He was 4-foot-9 and 98 pounds at the time.

A year later, cops were searching a house where he was living after receiving a tip that he’d pulled a gun during a large fight at Second and Porter Streets in South Philadelphia. They found clothes matching a photo taken at the scene, but no gun, according to a law enforcement source.

In recent Instagram posts, TJ could be seen in a ski mask, and there are several references to guns and drug use.

Then, he was gone.

On March 1, Thomas J. Siderio Jr., a seventh grader at Sharswood Elementary School who was weeks away from his 13th birthday, was shot in the back by a Philadelphia police officer and killed. He was fleeing the scene, police said, after he fired a bullet, shattering the window of an unmarked police car.

After the shooting, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said: “We as a society have failed him.” And at a news conference this week announcing that the officer who shot TJ would be fired for violating the department’s use-of-force policy, Outlaw returned to that theme.

“It was a tragedy before it even ended,” she said.

Outlaw has taken heat on social media from both sides: Critics of the police saw her comments as an attempt to deflect responsibility from the officers, while the pro-police crowd accused her of downplaying the danger that the child posed.

But she raised questions that Philadelphia cannot ignore.

Children aren’t born with guns in their hands. What went wrong? How did things get to this point, where cops investigating illegal firearms are led to a 12-year-old allegedly packing a laser-equipped 9-millimeter handgun?

“He had a tendency to follow the wrong kind of kids,” said Terry Elnicki-Varela, who works in special education and started helping TJ at school three years ago. “He was no angel. Far from it.”

Elnicki-Varela, however, saw TJ’s potential. She said he just needed someone to love him and guide him along “a straight path.” Eventually, she invited him to her home in South Philadelphia. Watching him chilling out on her porch with her grandson after school, she hoped it gave him a glimpse of a supportive family life.

“He didn’t have to go down the path he chose,” she said. Her grandson is heartbroken by TJ’s death.

Interviews with friends and family point to a chaotic and shifting home life for TJ, with a father who’s been incarcerated for several years and a mother with two arrests for drug possession and jail stints. Some described the mother, 31, as more of a “big sister.”

Although he nominally resided with a grandmother, TJ was a bit of a nomad and could often be spotted riding though neighborhoods from Pennsport to Girard Estates on his bicycle, visiting friends or family scattered across a wide swath of South Philadelphia.

TJ’s life was documented by extensive social media posts from the many young people he encountered touring around. He was well-known. To some as a friend, to others a menace. On certain blocks, he was a fixture.

“It won’t seem right walking down the block without you popping out of nowhere saying ‘Yo, gang,’” one relative wrote online after TJ’s passing.

Some posts show innocent scenes of TJ: At the Jersey Shore with other children, marching along with the Mummers, taking selfies or showing off his dance moves on TikTok — frequently while flipping off the camera. Friends described him as funny, intelligent, and caring.

In one video, posted after his death, a beaming TJ is shown scooting down a South Philly boulevard as two friends balance on his bike’s pegs.

“One thing about TJ,” a friend wrote in a caption. “If he got a bike, he not gon let me walk.”

“You were my whole entire world,” a girl wrote on Instagram, sharing a photo of TJ as a baby. “I always told you to stop wit the streets and not to be around some of the people you were around.”

But the same friends said he was often hardheaded. Other times, he seemed despondent about his life, with one friend recounting online how they’d held TJ after he had abruptly broken down in tears.

Mark Nasuti, a family friend who sometimes looked after the boy, expressed shock that TJ had ever gotten mixed up with guns.

Nasuti met TJ when he was 5 years old and living with his great-aunt Marge in South Philadelphia. Nasuti, whom TJ called “Uncle Frank,” knew the aunt and TJ’s mother from their neighborhood, and had stepped in to help raise TJ, spending his own money to get him clothes and other necessities, and a bike.

“I’d buy him stuff and we’d hang out,” said Nasuti. “And then when his aunt passed away, I felt bad and tried to keep an eye on him.”

After her death in 2018, TJ’s relatively harmless pranks, like throwing eggs at people’s houses on Mischief Night, began to turn into more serious trouble. TJ was clever, but he could sometimes be manipulated by older kids.

Nasuti recalled being contacted by police after a group of kids had called a pizza shop and mugged a delivery worker. Cops said that they had used Nasuti’s phone number to order the pizza and suspected his number had been spoofed. Nasuti knew better.

“The geniuses used TJ’s phone to call the pizza guy they robbed,” he said, referring to a phone he’d bought him.

Sometimes, people in the neighborhood would mention social media posts that appeared to show TJ with a gun. But Nasuti had never seen that himself. He said TJ might have been influenced by older kids or wanted to impress them by acting like a “tough guy.”

“There was nothing mean or malicious in this kid,” said Nasuti. “He had all these pets, these cats. He cried when his dog died. He was the antithesis of what they’re painting him out to be.”

Social media, however, provides another perspective. Like many adolescents, TJ seemed to sprout physically almost overnight and was itching to prove he was mature and could hang with his older crew.

In a video posted to an Instagram account associated with TJ last year, the boy appears to be smoking marijuana and driving a car while two older boys can be heard goading him on and laughing off screen. In more recent images, TJ poses for several photos wearing all black clothing and a ski mask that covered most of his face except for his eyes.

On an Instagram account that appears to have been run by TJ, the profile photo depicts someone just out of frame holding a pistol upside down while exposing a magazine of ammunition. The sleeve of a black jacket is just visible in the corner of the photograph –– the sleeve of a jacket Nasuti says he gave to TJ as a gift six months ago.

Just two days after TJ was killed, his father, Thomas Siderio Sr., initiated a lawsuit against the four officers who were in the car and gave chase.

Siderio, 28, is currently incarcerated on firearms convictions in a state prison in Coal Township, Pa. He’s been there for the last three years, and previously spent at least a year in prison in Philadelphia. The gun case stemmed from a 2017 shootout outside a bar in which the father’s cousin was killed.

Video and audio recordings obtained by The Inquirer show that the Taurus 9-millimeter that police say TJ tossed was found about 60 feet from his body. Siderio Sr.’s attorney, Conor Corcoran, has said he is not aware of any definitive evidence that TJ fired the gun.

TJ’s mother, Desirae Frame, also has a criminal record, with the two drug cases and other arrests for theft, forgery, contempt of court, and receiving stolen property.

This week, Frame retained a high-profile personal-injury law firm in what is likely a precursor to a lawsuit over TJ’s death.

Attorney Robert Mongeluzzi’s past clients include victims of the 2010 duck boat accident in the Delaware River that killed two passengers and the 2013 Salvation Army building collapse that killed six people. He said Frame “asked us to find out what really happened” in the shooting of her son and to “gather every piece of evidence and push for reform so this never happens again.”

Mongeluzzi said that the initial reporting on the shooting appears to be damning for the Philadelphia Police Department but that there are still many unanswered questions.

“I think a lawsuit will be necessary to get the information and the reform,” he said.

In a statement issued through Mongeluzzi on Friday, Frame said: “I love my son and his death is a tragedy that has left a hole in my heart. While TJ may have had challenges in his life, he was a loving son and friend who did not deserve to be gunned down in the back while unarmed. My only hope is that out of this tragedy there is reform, so that no other mother has to go through the pain of burying their child.”

Nasuti said he had lost touch with TJ a bit in recent years, as the boy grew older, but continued to check in on him, making sure he had what he needed.

“He was like my little friend, my buddy,” he said. “But we were spending less time.”

At 7:09 p.m. March 1, Nasuti spoke to TJ for the last time.

It was a conversation that went much like all their other quick chats. As a goof, Nasuti had purchased a kid’s book for 3- to 5-year-olds, and dropped it off along with pillows and a comforter that Frame had asked for, because the boy would be staying with her.

That night, TJ called Nasuti back. He wanted some money to go out with his friends later that night. Nasuti brought up the book, teasing the boy. The 12-year-old responded with an expletive, and started laughing.

“He was in good spirits,” Nasuti said. “He seemed happy, he was laughing.”

About 30 minutes later, TJ was pronounced dead.

On Thursday morning, at Lighthouse Baptist Church at Broad and Ritner Streets, eight blocks from the shooting, TJ’s body lay in an open casket for his funeral, alongside wreaths of flowers — the Sixers, the Froggy Carr Wench Brigade, a message from his parents calling him “#1 son.”

Prayer cards contained a link to an online memorial video. Photos showed TJ as a newborn. Then he’s on roller blades. Cuddling with a cat. Sitting on a pumpkin. A baby in plaid overalls in front of a Christmas tree. At the Mummers Parade.

The pastor, Mandell Gross, went around the church, asking dozens of young people who’d attended the funeral to say their names into the microphone. He reminded them each name is important and pleaded with them to “love one another” and avoid TJ’s fate.

“We need each other,” Gross said, “more now than ever.”

Police sirens wailed in the background.

The night before, at TJ’s viewing, Nasuti walked into the church to pay his respects.

As a little kid, TJ loved playing with the rings Nasuti wore, particularly the gaudy blue one that Nasuti wore on his right pinkie. It was his favorite.

As he knelt down Wednesday evening and looked at his young friend in the casket, wearing a gray suit and with his hair combed back, Nasuti slipped the blue ring off and put it on TJ’s left index finger.

He kissed TJ’s forehead, said goodbye, and walked out.

Staff writers Max Marin, Jeremy Roebuck, Craig R. McCoy, and Barbara Laker contributed to this article.