Three years after a 16-year-old was gunned down waiting for a trolley, police said they’ve identified his killers

More than three years after a 16-year-old was gunned down while walking to catch the trolley in Southwest Philadelphia, police and prosecutors say they have identified two men responsible for his death.

Ibyn Freeman, 18, was taken into custody over the weekend and charged with murder and related crimes in connection with the killing of Jaseem Thomas in April 2023.

Atum El, 20, is also expected to be charged, prosecutors said. El is already in federal custody, accused of carjacking and gun crimes.

The arrest marks a breakthrough in a case that drew community-wide attention after Thomas, who was declared brain-dead days after the shooting, became an organ donor. His heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver were donated to five people whose lives were transformed by a kindness offered by Thomas’ mother amid her grief.

At the time, Shanae Thomas said the decision allowed her to ensure that her son’s legacy would be defined not by the people who shot him, but by the lives he saved.

Now, more than three years later, investigators say they have identified at least two of the people they believe were responsible for his death.

On the evening of April 27, 2023, Thomas was walking along Woodland Avenue near 67th Street when a man stepped out of a black SUV parked across the street. The gunman approached the teen and shot him multiple times, including in the head, before climbing back into the vehicle and fleeing, police said.

Police recovered six spent shell casings at the scene and a gun that Thomas had been carrying.

Assistant District Attorney Adam Farraye said Monday that Freeman and El — who were teens at the time — had been lying in wait for Thomas to appear.

Investigators, he said, uncovered cell phone, social media, and other digital forensic evidence connecting the men to the crime while conducting a grand jury investigation into a crew known as the “Close Range Gang” from Southwest Philly.

Freeman and El, he said, were members of the clique.

Thomas may have had ties to the Close Range Gang’s enemies, a law enforcement source said — and that put a target on his back.

Farraye said Freeman and El, as well as Freeman’s 19-year-old brother, Ismail, and another man, Kamal Burke, 20, will also be charged with committing a robbery on the day Thomas was killed.

The arrest comes as Philadelphia is on pace to record the fewest homicides in recent memory, and as detectives and prosecutors continue to work through a backlog of unsolved shootings from the height of the pandemic-era gun violence surge.

Thomas was among 24 Philadelphia teens and children to die from gun violence in 2023.

Known by loved ones as “Jaja” or “Seem,” he spent his teen years living in Southwest Philadelphia, not far from where he was killed. He was the oldest of four children, and, standing 6-foot-2, he was a natural on the basketball court, his family said.

At the time of his death, he was a junior at Philadelphia Learning Academy South.

“I could vent to him about anything,” his sister Dash, then 13, said in the days after his death. “I don’t know how I’m going to do this life without him.”