Philadelphia’s top prosecutor says a police officer’s made-up tip helped the man now accused of killing Officer Shane Seiber walk free in an earlier murder case.
Story Highlights
- On Tuesday, October 13, District Attorney Larry Krasner said police misconduct sank a 2019 murder case against Eric Lewis, who was acquitted.
- Krasner says a former officer invented an “anonymous tip” naming a killer called “Spice,” a person Krasner says never existed.
- Lewis, 35, now faces more than 70 charges, including murder of a police officer, in the Saturday, October 10 ambush that killed Officer Seiber.
- Philadelphia police pushed back, saying “assigning blame while families are grieving does nothing to advance accountability.”
Krasner’s Claim: A Fake Tip Sank the Case
Larry Krasner is Philadelphia’s district attorney, the city’s elected chief prosecutor. In a video statement, he explained why Lewis was free: he said the earlier case was “so deeply flawed” by police errors and misconduct that the judge “did what he had to do” and acquitted him. “We were dealing with a guilty man,” Krasner said. “He should not have been out.”
Far-left Philly DA Larry Krasner says accused anti-white cop killer Eric Lewis was acquitted of previous murder charges due to police misconduct during investigationhttps://t.co/y4Ov9pnRfM
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 14, 2026
The earlier case was the August 31, 2019, road-rage shooting death of Christopher Williams, 32, in West Philadelphia. Lewis was arrested in November 2020 after a witness picked him out of a photo lineup, and he was later tried and acquitted. Krasner says the officer at the center of the trouble was dating Lewis’s sister. He says that officer tried to “torpedo” the case by claiming a tip named someone called “Spice” as the real killer, then later admitted to a lawyer that he made it up and had lied to a prosecutor.
“This is beyond outrageous. This is giving false information to law enforcement,” Krasner said. He called it obstruction of justice, which means interfering with a criminal case. He also said one detective failed to finish required work, misled people about it and filled out paperwork falsely. Of the two, he said, one “is arguably criminal. Yes, I said criminal.”
Firing, Discipline and the Police Response
Krasner says the judge referred the officers involved to Internal Affairs, the police unit that investigates officers’ own conduct. He says the officer was fired and is fighting to get his job back, and another was disciplined. Police spokesman Sgt. Eric Gripp confirmed the officer left the department in September 2025 and said his records are under review. None of the officers has been charged with a crime.
The police department said the commissioner’s position “remains unchanged” and that it will “examine every aspect of this matter.” It added: “There will be a time to address the full record, but it is not now.” In another statement, it said, “True leadership does not seek to assign fault in a moment like this. It stands with the families.”
A Fallen Officer and a Grieving City
Officer Seiber, 40, was an Air Force veteran with 10 years on the force. He leaves a wife, a 7-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter. Police say he was shot and killed and his partner badly wounded on the 100 block of North 52nd Street in West Philadelphia, and that at least nine other officers were fired upon before a SWAT team ended a standoff. Lewis has worked for the Philadelphia Water Department, according to court records.
Lewis also faced 2021 assault and gun charges in a separate case that never went to trial after the key witness died. For officers and neighbors, the lesson is plain: honest police work and clean cases keep violent people off the streets, and one lie can undo it all.
Sources:
foxnews.com, fox29.com, thepostmillennial.com, noticias.foxnews.com, nbcphiladelphia.com
