A prior murder case against the suspect in the killing of Philadelphia Police Officer Shane Seiber fell apart due to police misconduct, District Attorney Larry Krasner said Tuesday.
Had 35-year-old Eric Lewis been convicted in the 2019 homicide, he likely would have been sentenced to decades of incarceration and almost certainly would have been behind bars early Saturday morning, when he allegedly shot Seiber and his partner in West Philadelphia.
Instead, a judge found Lewis not guilty and referred an officer and detective involved in the investigation to the department’s Internal Affairs Division, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Krasner said the officer was in a romantic relationship with Lewis’s sister and invented an anonymous tip that implicated a fictitious person named “Spice” in the homicide in an attempt to clear Lewis.
“This is beyond outrageous,” Krasner said in a video published Tuesday. The behavior, he added, was “arguably criminal.”
Krasner said the PPD fired one of the officers involved and disciplined the other. Department representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Lewis had been charged with murder and aggravated assault in relation to an August 2019 road rage shooting in the Mill Creek neighborhood that left 32-year-old Christopher Williams dead and a second person injured.
It was not the only time Lewis avoided a jail sentence after being accused of a serious crime. In 2021, he was charged with assault and gun offenses, but the case was dropped after the victim and primary witness died of “natural causes,” the District Attorney’s Office said.
Lewis allegedly shot Seiber and his partner — a 33-year-old man who was struck 12 times and remains hospitalized — during an altercation just after 12:15 a.m. Saturday on the 100 block of N. 52nd Street, near Race Street. Police had been called for a report of a man with a gun on the porch of home, law enforcement officials said.
He fired upon nine additional officers who responded to the scene before eventually being apprehended by members of the department’s SWAT team, according to authorities.
Seiber, a 40-year-old married father of two young children who lived in Bensalem, died about eight hours after the shooting at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. He was a U.S. Air Force veteran who served two tours in Iraq before joining the PPD in 2016, according to an obituary.
Funeral arrangements, which were announced Tuesday, include a viewing and service Oct. 20 at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.
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