TOM LISI | Staff Writer His family told Jeremiahs Josiah-Alberto Sanchez to be careful not to go too many places by himself. Tammy Moore said her grandson would call her to pick him up from school because other boys or young men were after him.
Moore said she heard a rumor the week prior to Sunday’s shooting at Park City Center that some men had been talking about killing Sanchez.
“I don’t know why these boys don’t like my grandson,” Moore said.
Sanchez was charged Friday in the Park City shooting that left three people injured, including Sanchez.
Moore, of Lancaster, said the 61 charges against her 16-year-old grandson, including two counts of attempted homicide, are unfair and paint Sanchez out to be a monster and the aggressor in the violence at Park City Center on Sunday.
“If my grandson Jeremiahs had a gun, OK, yeah, he was wrong,” Moore said. “If those other boys had a gun, they were wrong. But it will all come out because I know it just wasn’t one gun.”
According to Moore, two men involved in the incident got tipped off by someone that Sanchez was at the mall Sunday and went there to target him. Moore said she believes they also came to the mall armed.
And an armed bystander who intervened should not have shot first and asked questions later, Moore said. The 50-year-old man who was legally licensed to carry a concealed handgun shot Sanchez and kept him on the ground until police arrived, Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said during a press conference Friday morning. Adams said the man was justified in shooting Sanchez, and he was not charged with a crime.
Moore, 51, said she didn’t know if Sanchez brought an illegal gun to the mall and doesn’t condone his actions if he did. But she said she could see why he did have one if he felt others were looking to kill him.
LNP | LancasterOnline contacted the Lancaster Bureau of Police and did not receive a response Friday regarding Moore’s claims.
Previous violence
Moore said she didn’t know if the incident at the mall is connected, or if other threats her grandson had received were related to the men who confronted him at the mall, but she said Sanchez's home was a target of gun violence earlier this year.
She said the Sanchez family reported gun shots fired into their Locust Street home to city police over the summer. She added that some individuals returned the night of the alleged shooting and told Sanchez's mother that if he had been present, they would've killed him.
Moore, 51, pointed to a small hole in a second-floor window sill on the exterior of the house and said it had come from a bullet during that incident.
LNP | LancasterOnline reached out to Lancaster city police Friday to confirm Moore’s claim, but they did not respond.
That incident, Moore said, was just one that convinced Sanchez and his family that they were in danger.
According to his charging documents, Sanchez has a juvenile record for robbery and a weapons offense, both from several years ago. Adams declined to go into details of his record.
Sanchez is a student at DASH, a School District of Lancaster special education program for kids that may have emotional problems and learning disabilities, Moore said. DASH provides “intensified support to students, with the goal for them to return to their home school and become productive and positive members of their community,” according to an SDL education plan report.
Sanchez's attorney, Edwin Pfursich, declined comment.
Moore said she hasn’t spoken to or seen his grandson since the shooting incident, but was Lancaster General Hospital after Sanchez was taken there to treat his injuries. She said hospital security told Sanchez’s family and families visiting other individuals being treated for injuries from Sunday’s shooting to leave the premises out of fear of retaliatory violence at the hospital.
A spokesperson for LGH said he would look into that claim, but did not immediately respond with further information Friday.
Sanchez is still being guarded by the police at LGH, Moore said. He underwent another surgery on Thursday, she said, but did not know for what. A previous surgery happened on Monday, she said. Only Sanchez's parents have been allowed to see him, Moore said, and that was very briefly earlier in the week.
A spokesperson for Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, which operates LGH, said the hospital can’t discuss the condition of a minor without parental consent.
Adams said in an email Friday that she did not know when Sanchez will be released from the hospital.
