https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/eric-lewis-shane-seiber-philadelphia-philly-police-shooting-20261011.html

How a brief conversation on a West Philadelphia porch left one officer dead, and another seriously wounded

Officer Shane Seiber was knocking on the door of a West Philadelphia home around 12:50 a.m. Saturday when Eric Lewis walked up from behind, demanding to know why police were on his porch, according to a law enforcement source.

Seiber and his partner were responding to a neighbor’s 911 call of a person with a gun in front of a home on the 100 block of North 52nd Street, police said. As Lewis approached the officers, they asked whether he lived there, the source said — but he quickly began yelling and acting aggressively.

A brief struggle followed, and just as the officers moved to check whether Lewis was armed, the source said, he shot them.

Lewis continued to fire as they lay wounded, yelling that he told them to get off his porch, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

When two other officers arrived at the home shortly after 1 a.m., the source said, they found Seiber and his partner lying unconscious, bleeding from their wounds.

Seiber, 40, a 10-year police veteran, was shot three times and died hours later at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The other officer, a 33-year-old with nine years on the job, was shot 12 times, and remains hospitalized.

Lewis, meanwhile, retreated into a dark alley behind his home — then shot at the reinforcements who would soon arrive, officials said. When he was eventually arrested after a nearly hourlong standoff, he blamed the officers for coming onto his porch, according to an arrest report obtained by The Inquirer.

“I did what I did because they did what they did,” he said, according to the report.

The source’s account, together with the arrest report — which includes interviews with nine officers — provides the most fulsome picture of the moments leading up to Seiber’s death, a shooting that has devastated Philadelphia’s law enforcement community, stunned neighbors, and left a family grieving a husband and father of two young children.

It also offers a fuller account of what unfolded in the hours that followed: a tense standoff in which Lewis, 35, hid in the darkness, shot at responding police, and eventually climbed a tree behind his home as SWAT officers trained their weapons on him.

As he sat perched two stories above the ground early Saturday, Lewis called out to SWAT snipers on a nearby rooftop, asking them not to shoot, according to the report.

He said he wanted to “end this peacefully,” the report said.

Lewis is charged with murder and related crimes in connection with Seiber’s death. He faces 10 counts of attempted murder and related offenses for wounding the second officer, and allegedly shooting at nine others who rushed to the block and came under fire.

Lewis was arraigned early Sunday morning in Municipal Court, where he was also charged with disarming a law enforcement officer, carrying a firearm without a license, and related crimes.

Police said that after Lewis was arrested in the alleyway, they recovered a shotgun and two handguns, at least one of which belonged to the officers he shot.

He is being held without bail at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. Lewis is represented by the Defender Association of Philadelphia. Chief Defender Keisha Hudson declined to comment Sunday.

Two of Lewis’ siblings also declined to comment Sunday.

District Attorney Larry Krasner called Lewis’ actions a “brazen and disturbing act of violence” against law enforcement. He said his office would seek full accountability for Lewis’ crimes, but added that the investigation was in its early stages and continuing.

The sequence of events

The neighbor’s call came in around 12:17 a.m., police said — there was a person with a gun at 140 N. 52nd St.

Seiber and his partner arrived at approximately 12:50 a.m., according to the source. Then, at 1:01 a.m., a neighbor again called 911, and said there had been a shooting.

Additional officers arrived two minutes later to find Seiber and his partner bleeding on the porch. They were carried to a nearby patrol car and rushed to the hospital.

More police rushed in, and as they surveyed the back of the home, more gunfire began exploding through the dark alleyway, sending officers diving for cover behind parked cars, according to the arrest report. No one was struck.

Police sealed off the alley until a SWAT team arrived about 1:40 a.m., the report said, and ordered Lewis over a speaker to come out unarmed.

After two SWAT snipers took positions on a rooftop on North Wilton Street, they heard a man’s voice coming from a tree in the alley below, according to the report. The man asked officers not to shoot. One sniper spotted him with the flashlight affixed to his weapon, about two stories off the ground, and ordered him to come down.

Lewis soon fell from the tree, hitting branches on the way down. He told officers he was hurt and could not walk, according to the report.

One SWAT officer, armed with a ballistic shield, then placed him under arrest.

Lewis was taken to Jefferson University Hospital, where officers said he spoke to the police who guarded him for nearly two hours.

According to the report, Lewis said he had been across the street when he saw the officers on his porch, and he walked up to them. He shot them, he said, after the officers put their hands on him.

He also said he shot the officers because they were white, the report said. He told one officer at the hospital, a Black woman, that “if it was you that responded we would have just had a conversation,” the document said.

“They had guns, so I had every right to defend myself,” he said, according to the report.

Police recovered two handguns — including a 9mm Glock service weapon that police said belonged to the injured officer — from the area where Lewis was arrested and a shotgun from a nearby yard.

The 9mm handgun had been loaded with a magazine that came from Seiber’s belt, the police report said.

Lewis has worked as a trades helper for the city Water Department since 2024. He has a criminal record dating to 2012 that includes a 2015 misdemeanor conviction for carrying a firearm in public, court records show. Krasner said Saturday that Lewis had no felony convictions that would have barred him from owning a gun.

A deadly call

Seiber was the fourth Philadelphia police officer to die in the line of duty in the last three years.

He joined the force in 2016. After he graduated from the police academy in 2017, Seiber thanked those who had supported him in a Facebook post, promising to “do my best to make y’all proud in this crazy, crazy occupation I’m about to begin.” He also praised his classmates in Class 380 as “some of the greatest people I’ve ever met.”

In the same post, Seiber thanked his wife, who he said had endless patience for his “constant shenanigans, pranks, and general goofing around.”

The couple have a son, 7, and a daughter, 3, police said.

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, visibly distraught Saturday, asked for the city’s prayers.

“This will be a period of mourning for us, but we will stand tall as a department,” he said. “We can get through this together.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5912248&forum_id=2#50186596)

He also said he shot the officers because they were white, the report said.

He also said he shot the officers because they were white, the report said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5912248&forum_id=2#50186600)