Johnson: Boy defied officers

When police arrived at Ronald Timbers' Crescentville home Monday afternoon, he was brandishing a knife and a hammer and engaged in an intense struggle with his mother.

Police said that somehow his mother - who called police - was able to wrest the knife and hammer away from her son.

Weaponless, Timbers, 15, ran up the steps leading to the second floor and came back down wielding a clothes iron, Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said yesterday at a news conference.

"He held the iron over his head," Johnson said. "The mother was on the ground at the time, almost like in a fetal position. As he put the iron over the head, he came towards the officer and the officer fired one time."

Timbers ignored police demands to drop the object, police said.

It was not clear whether Timbers seemed to be about to hit his mother or the two veteran officers who were called to his house.

Timbers died shortly after at Albert Einstein Medical Center.

The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the chest, said Jeff Moran, a spokesman for the medical examiner's office.

Timbers' family declined to speak to the Daily News yesterday, but told other news organizations that Timbers had been unarmed when police arrived.

Johnson said that Timbers had a criminal past, but he declined to provide specifics.

Fernando Gallard, spokesman for the Philadelphia School District, said that Timbers left the CEP-Miller Alternative School for students with serious discipline problems, on Westminster Avenue near Lancaster in West Philadelphia, in October of last year.

Gallard said that Timbers left CEP-Miller because he committed a Level 2 violation of the school code of conduct, which can include multiple fights, bullying, or bringing a banned weapon to school.

He was transferred to a court delinquency program by court order.

Recently, he had been enrolled in the school district's 10-day RETI-WRAP (Re-entry Transition Initiative-Welcome Return Assessment Program), intended to help students readjust when returning from a court delinquency program, Gallard said.

Could the iron wielded by Timbers be considered a deadly weapon? Johnson said that only the officer knows what his mind-set was, in the split-second during which he chose to fire his gun.

"If there is reason enough to shoot, then there is reason enough to kill," Johnson said.

While Timbers' family mourns its loss, Johnson said he wouldn't criticize the officers involved until completion of a full investigation.

"Any sort of sympathy and respect that we can give the family, we will do it," Johnson said. "These officers did not go to work with the idea that they were going to shoot a 15-year-old child." *