Philadelphia Police officer Edsaul Mendoza was arrested today for the murder of 12 year old Thomas "T.J." Siderio back in March. According to prosecutors, Siderio was shot in the back while unarmed and Mendoza knew he was not armed. That summarizes what we know about the government's case so far. If you're more interested in the mainstream media coverage of this case we recommend checking out the link above the map on this page as well as the video embedded below the body of this article. The main purpose of this article is to supplement the mainstream media coverage with some information that we've since discovered ourselves.
Edsaul Mendoza is not an easy person to dig up personal data about because neither the press nor the government have released his middle initial and his date of birth was hard to find. We found his date of birth after looking up his name in the Pennsylvania court system (https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/CaseSearch) and finding case number MC-51-CR-0007104-2022 which was filed today as well as the charging document which we are uploading as a PDF with this article. The PDF icon can be found above the map. The PDF lists Mendoza's charges as they've been reported by the press. It also includes his date of birth (11/11/1995) which you need to find out if he is in jail and what jail he is in (https://incarceratedperson-locator.phila.gov/).
Rarely is it so difficult to find out if someone is in a jail. Usually you only need their first or last name to see a list of partial matches. Sometimes they require both a first and last name, but seldom do they require a date of birth. Requiring a date of birth makes it almost impossible for anyone outside of that person's immediate family to see if they're in jail. The city of Philadelphia would probably defend this practice as a privacy measure, but we feel it does far more to cut off inmates from society than protect anyone. This author personally writes people in jails/prisons and doesn't know their birthdays. Most of their friends are probably the same. Surely most inmates would want it to be possible for their friends to be able to learn how to write them. In this case, being able to use the jail website properly takes on a heightened sense of urgency due to the remote yet very realistic possibility of Mendoza posting bail eventually. People have a right to know if this kid killer is still in jail without having to sleuth their way to his birthday.
Charging documents usually display the full name of the defendant (ex: State of Florida v. Theodore Robert Bundy), but you won't even find a middle initial on Mendoza's charging papers. We suspect this of being due to a desire to make finding information about him difficult. Our background check service usually finds detailed address histories of most cops we lookup, but we could find no matches for anyone named Edsaul Mendoza anywhere. Perhaps if we had a middle initial our luck would be better.
Other online records do not list his full name or middle initial either, but do tell you some things about him. One source reports that Mendoza made just $20,035 working as a police officer for the city of Philadelphia in 2020 (https://govsalaries.com/mendoza-edsaul-109679320). The previous two years report $61,686 each. Why was Mendoza's pay cut by about 2/3 in 2020? In a year in which most officers reported record income due to overtime thanks to Black Lives Matter, Mendoza made way less. Possibilities include being on leave due some disciplinary matter, simply health related, or something else entirely. We would really like to know.
Finally, The arresting officer is listed as Daniel P. Murawski.