Youth, 17, gets 25-50 years for shooting at cops

Donyea Phillips will have a long time behind bars to think about the day last fall when he unloaded a barrage of bullets at a dozen narcotics officers from inside a Frankford house, where he sold crack out of a window.

Common Pleas Judge Glenn Bronson yesterday sentenced Phillips, 17, to 25 to 50 years in state prison on charges of attempted murder in connection with the two officers he shot, and on charges of recklessly endangering the 10 other officers who were outside the house.

About 6:30 p.m. Nov. 13, after Narcotics Field Unit officers announced themselves outside the home at Josephine and Orthodox streets, Phillips grabbed a Glock pistol he had bought days earlier and fired out a first-floor, rear-bedroom window.

Phillips, then 16, thought, "They're not going to get me," according to his police statement, and "laid back" and fired out the window, Assistant District Attorney Namratha Ravikant said in court yesterday. He randomly fired, emptying the Glock, as in a scene out of "Scarface," she said.

He hit Officer Christopher Reed in the upper left thigh and Officer Stephen Holts in the right hip. The officers were at the house to serve a search warrant.

Phillips, a lanky teen, said yesterday that he wanted "to apologize to the officers, every one of them who was out there."

He said he "honestly did not know there were officers [outside that day]. I know what I did was wrong. . . . I do apologize. I did not know it was y'all. I did not know it was Philadelphia police officers doing their job."

Officer William Beck, who was also at the house that day, said after the hearing that it was unbelievable that Phillips would not have known who was outside.

The plainclothes officers, wearing vests emblazoned with the word "police," on them "knocked and announced our presence . . . in a very loud voice," Beck said. "There's no way somebody could not hear what we were there for."

As the bullets came flying out, Beck said he "dove over the front of a truck to get out of the way," then "went back and pulled Officer Holts [who was hit] out of the line of fire."

Holts, 40, yesterday recalled getting shot as a "traumatic" experience. Reed, 32, said that he "will never forget" that day. "It felt like a sledgehammer when I first got hit," he said.

Phillips was described in court yesterday, and previously by family members, as having had an unstable, horrid childhood that included neglect and abuse by his mother, stints in foster homes and then a period living with his father, before he ran away last year.

He ended up illegally living in a bedroom of that Frankford house, unbeknownst to the rental manager and owner, from where he and a cousin, Troy Zimmerman, sold crack cocaine.

About 15 family members came to the hearing yesterday to support Phillips. His mother, Josette Phillips, bowed her head and cried after her son spoke in court.

Defense attorney James Lammendola asked for the mandatory-minimum sentence of five to 10 years, noting his client's age and his positive qualities that had been testified to yesterday by two people who had taught Phillips art or had mentored him in county prison.

Phillips had pleaded guilty in July to attempted murder, recklessly endangering another person and weapons, drugs and criminal-trespass offenses.

Zimmerman, 22, who was also in the bedroom that day, had pleaded guilty to drug offenses and is to be sentenced Oct. 24.

Phillips still faces an aggravated-assault case. On April 9, he allegedly jumped prison Correctional Officer Lamonte White. He is charged as a juvenile, but the commonwealth is seeking to have him tried in adult court. *