A group of two dozen gathered to release white balloons outside the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, crowding protectively around Ikea Coney, known throughout the city as the mother of Darrin Manning, the 16-year-old teen who underwent surgery a day after he was stopped and frisked by Philadelphia police in January. The encounter left Manning with a blood clot in his testicle and a felony charge of assaulting a police officer.

In the past few months, Manning’s attorney reached an agreement with the District Attorney’s office to drop the charges, a grand jury exonerated the officers involved in the case, and District Attorney Seth Williams said that Manning distrusted Philadelphia police officers, “based on the way he was raised."

To show Coney support, the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Action Network (PA NAN) organized a vigil on July 24 to protest the District Attorney’s statement against Coney as a mother and demand justice for her son.

The statement added insult to injury for Manning’s family. The teen said that he was on his way to basketball practice with classmates on a bitter January day when police approached him and his peers. Manning began to run with his classmates, but reportedly stopped running when he said that he realized he had done nothing wrong.

“Seth William said Ikea Coney did not teach Darrin to respect police officers. She did,” Pam Africa of MOVE said at Thursday’s vigil. “I will never teach my children to respect police officers.”

“An injustice was done three times,” former Temple University professor Anthony Monteiro said, “First to Darrin, second to his mother and family, third to all black mothers.”

The group also demanded action to hold the police department accountable.

“The police cannot police themselves,” PA NAN President Paula Peebles said. “We better stand up now because they have locked up our men.”

Coney said that Manning, a student at Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, aims to attend law school some day. Throughout the vigil, Coney stood with her daughter and relatives, her jaw set, staring forward. She spoke quietly without irony.

“I want to thank the officers for not killing my son.”