A 15-year-old who died in a stolen car crash while fleeing St. Paul police last week was on the run from Boys Totem Town, his family said Monday.

“I’m not condoning what he did, but I don’t believe my son deserved a death penalty for stealing a car,” said John McAfee III’s mother, Nicole Tisdale.

Police gave chase when McAfee was spotted in the stolen car about 2 1/2 hours after he slipped away from the unlocked St. Paul residential center for troubled teens about 9:30 p.m. Nov. 25.

Tisdale said Monday that she and the boy’s father have questions about what happened to their son.

“I will get to the bottom of it,” she said. “I’m not going to give up.”

Police said their investigation was continuing, but a spokesman said pursuing officers didn’t know the driver was 15.

McAfee, who was born and raised in St. Paul, had been living with his family in the Dayton’s Bluff area for about five years. He had many friends, loved to sketch and was “very smart,” his mother said, adding that his grades had slipped as he became interested in girls.

He had aspired to be an architect, said Joseph Irving, McAfee’s stepfather. McAfee was a 10th-grader at Humboldt High School before he was sent to Ramsey County’s Totem Town, a residential treatment center where juvenile males convicted of crimes can be sent.

McAfee had been close with his uncle, who died of cancer in 2010, and the young man struggled after that and got in trouble, Tisdale said.

“I don’t understand why John picked the road that he picked, because he has a big, loving family,” Tisdale said.

McAfee was on probation in a theft case, and he’d been sentenced to Totem Town for four to nine months for a burglary, Irving said. He’d arrived at the juvenile center Nov. 4.

McAfee had been “doing very well at Boys Totem Town,” according to Chris Crutchfield, Ramsey County Community Corrections spokesman. “He’d been very helpful,” he said, adding there were no indications that McAfee would run.”

But last Tuesday, as the young men at Totem Town were preparing for bed about 9:30 p.m., McAfee ran out a side door of a dorm, Crutchfield said. Opening the door tripped an alarm.

Staff pursued McAfee to the edge of the property, which is their standard procedure, Crutchfield said. When they didn’t catch him, they contacted St. Paul police.

Totem Town is intended as an alternative to a more punitive state lockup; it is not locked or gated and staff is with youth at all times, Crutchfield said.

The boys who are sent to Totem Town attend school there and participate in activities on- and off-site, Crutchfield said.

“The care of our young people, keeping them safe and working with them, is something we take very seriously,” Crutchfield said.

Tisdale said she received a call from Totem Town last Tuesday night, reporting that her son had run away.

“I wanted to get to the bottom of why was it so easy for him to run,” Tisdale said. “If you removed him from my house, why did you put him in a facility that he can run from and where boys have been running from since the beginning of time? Why is it so easy for these boys to get away from there?”

Community Corrections is conducting a review of how McAfee got away and how to prevent such incidents from recurring, Crutchfield said. There have been 31 instances of males running away from Totem Town this year, which Crutchfield said is about average.

Totem Town is in St. Paul’s Battle Creek neighborhood, a couple of miles from where a car was stolen Tuesday night in the 2000 block of Suburban Avenue.

Police on patrol in downtown St. Paul found someone driving that car about midnight Tuesday. They followed it with red lights and sirens on. The driver fled, passed other cars and went into opposite lanes of traffic, according to police. It was a short pursuit, said Sgt. Paul Paulos, St. Paul police spokesman.

McAfee reached an estimated 80 mph, according to emergency-radio traffic of the incident posted by Minnesota Police Clips. Police are investigating the driver’s speed, Paulos said Monday.

Police said that officers lost sight of the car as McAfee continued south on Robert Street but soon found the car had crashed into a commercial building that houses Captain Ken’s Foods at 344 S. Robert St. on the West Side.

Tisdale said she had not taught her son to drive and he hadn’t taken driving lessons. She thinks he must have been scared because “police were chasing him in so many cars,” Tisdale said. “I’m wondering why they didn’t stop the pursuit and just block the roads. I’m pretty sure they could tell he was a young boy.”

But Paulos said officers could not tell the driver’s age. Police had received a report about McAfee running away from Totem Town, though the officers involved in the pursuit were unaware of that case and didn’t know the driver was McAfee, Paulos said.

Tisdale saw a photo of the smashed-up car on a news station’s website and couldn’t believe that striking a building would have caused so much damage to the car. There was no visible structural damage to the building. Based on the amount of damage to the car, Tisdale said she believes officers used their squads to block McAfee’s car and struck it with their squads.

Paulos said on Monday that officers did not hit McAfee’s car and that the squad cars were undamaged.

When Tisdale and Irving were notified of the crash and got to Regions Hospital, they were told McAfee had a brain injury, broken neck and severed spine, Tisdale said.

“They kept him on life support until the rest of the family could come and say their goodbyes,” she said.

McAfee died at the hospital later Wednesday. His funeral will be Saturday.

“I don’t want him to be remembered as a bad kid,” Tisdale said. “He was a good, spirited kid who loved helping people. … He’s a teenager that made mistakes, just like a lot of other teenagers.”

Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262.

Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried.