Her son was shot in the back by a neighbor and the case was closed. She still doesn’t understand why.

Any day now.

That, more than just about anything else, was the overriding wish of Jannette Santiago in the days and weeks after the death of her son in November.

Any day now, she hoped, police would rearrest the neighbor that they initially said had shot Oscar Santiago Drew in the back during a dispute in which both men had drawn their guns.

Any day now, she prayed, prosecutors would move swiftly to press charges against Santiago Drew’s alleged killer.

Any day now, justice would be served.

But something unexpected happened while Santiago was hoping and praying: The authorities dropped the case.

If that wasn’t jarring enough, then there was this: No one, she said, bothered to tell her about it.

“I don’t know how to let him go,” Santiago said of her eldest son in between sobs as we sat together on a recent Wednesday in the living room of her home in Northeast Philadelphia. “He was discarded like a bag of trash, like he was no one. From the very beginning, all we’ve been asking is, ‘What happened?’”

That is not a lot to ask when a family is mourning the sudden loss of a loved one. I’ve written countless times before about how city officials often treat victims of crime in Philadelphia with less courtesy than they do the accused, but this one was a first for me.

And just like Santiago and her family, whenever I hear about one of these cases, I find myself wondering: What happened? How is it that in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, law enforcement officials so consistently struggle to find a way to treat victims’ families in a way that doesn’t worsen their grief?

On the morning of Nov. 22, the day before Thanksgiving, Oscar Santiago Drew, a 33-year-old warehouse worker, was shot and killed during an argument that began between Santiago Drew’s longtime girlfriend and a woman who lived in the upstairs apartment of the Rhawnhurst home the couple shared.

The initial police report classified the incident as a homicide, and described it as “an ongoing neighbor dispute that evolved into both men producing guns.” Santiago Drew, both parents said, had a license to carry.

Santiago and her ex-husband, Oscar Drew, rushed to their son’s home, where they were met with yellow police tape and few answers.

Officers took the man who shot Santiago Drew into custody, but that night, Santiago said she received a call from a detective informing her that they didn’t have enough evidence to hold him and that he had been released. She was distraught but said she was led to believe that the investigation would continue.

Here’s where things go from curious to just plain confusing: After failing to get information about the investigation that she thought was still ongoing, Santiago reached out to the Citizens Crime Commission of the Delaware Valley, a nonprofit that, among other things, works with law enforcement agencies and the public to increase communication. Santiago said she was told by one of the staffers in January that the case had been cleared. There would be no further investigation. There would be no charges. Case closed.

When I asked the police about this case, a spokesperson said, “This matter was determined by the District Attorney’s Office to be a self-defense case and did not pursue charges.”

A month later, in February, Santiago and family thought they might finally get some answers in a meeting at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. She said they were told they couldn’t take notes or record the meeting. She and her ex-husband left only more frustrated.

In a statement in response to my questions, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said the family was “definitely informed” that the case was being closed because the other gunman — who isn’t being named here because he wasn’t charged — acted in self-defense. Furthermore, the spokesperson said of Santiago, “A video showing her son opening fire on the other man before he returned fire was played for the family, although she refused to watch it.”

“We’re very sorry for their loss,” the statement concluded. “We have no further comment.”

Both Santiago and her ex-husband strongly refute that characterization of what transpired at the meeting. “It’s a lie,” Santiago insisted.

She said that someone in the room mentioned the possibility of showing her and Santiago Drew’s father a surveillance video of their son’s shooting, but it never materialized; they listened to an audio recording of the shooting instead.

“All you could hear is the sound,” said Drew. “Before that, it was just a bunch of chopped-up videos to make a scenario. Never once did anyone show us a video — because I kept saying something was missing there — that showed Oscar actually firing the shots.”

“Never once did anyone show us a video that showed Oscar actually firing the shots.”

The conflicting information made no sense: Why would the district attorney’s office claim Santiago Drew’s parents were shown a video that they are adamant they never saw? And why would parents desperate for answers claim they didn’t see a video that might give them some answers — even if it may not be the ones they wanted?

For a little more clarity, I reached out to Heather Arias, the deputy director for the city’s Office of the Victim Advocate, who was at the meeting, in hopes of getting a more complete account of what happened.

Arias did not recall a video that explicitly showed Santiago Drew firing a gun. But despite that, she said the totality of evidence — including a compilation of videos, the location of shell casings, and at least one witness account — reinforced law enforcement’s decision to clear the case.

“I just remember walking away hoping that the family could understand a little bit better because it seemed very clear,” she said.

Maybe — but not to Santiago Drew’s parents, who continue to dispute that any of the evidence presented to them was so definitive that no one should have to answer for their son’s death.

And who could blame them at this point? Even if the evidence legitimately led law enforcement to the conclusion that they should not press charges, failing to adequately communicate that to the family is the kind of misstep that leads to confusion and mistrust.

In the absence of what Santiago Drew’s parents see as reliable information, they can do little more than speculate. Their son was Black. The neighbor is white. Did race play a role here? They’ve also been told that the neighbor who shot Santiago Drew is related to a politically connected family in New Jersey. Was that a factor? And if Santiago Drew was killed by a bullet to the back, as the medical examiner’s report indicated, how could his shooting be considered self-defense?

This family deserves some clear answers. The district attorney’s office should hold another meeting with them, where everything is on the table, where all the evidence is shown and clearly explained, and where the family feels the respect of law enforcement officials who may feel they’ve done their job, but clearly haven’t if there is a family out here whose pain has only been compounded by what they feel is a lack of transparency.

And one other thing: In my reporting on this and similar cases over the years, no one has ever been able to adequately explain to me the city’s process for notifying families about prosecution decisions or case closures. At least not one applied consistently. In a city with so many murders and so much pain, it’s long past time for the police, the district attorney, the various victim advocates spread out across this city, and other stakeholders to come together and draft some guidelines to keep this kind of thing from happening again. And again.

It is the absolute least families who’ve lost loved ones in this city are owed, no matter the circumstance.