“What’s a 13-year-old boy doing out in the middle of the night?”

I’ve heard or read this question too many times since 13-year-old Adam Toledo was fatally shot by Chicago police in the early morning hours of March 29. The young teen was involved in an earlier shooting in the city’s Little Village neighborhood, along with 21-year-old Ruben Roman, who was arrested.

Toledo, who darted into an alley after police arrived, was reportedly holding a gun when an officer told him “drop it, drop it.” Toledo turned toward the officer, who fired one shot into Toledo’s chest, according to prosecutors. Toledo was buried Friday.

This case has sparked intense controversy since Toledo’s death, with somber vigils memorializing the teenager’s brief life and passionate rallies calling for the public release of a video from that morning. An investigation continues this week as outside observers take pot shots at all parties involved — the cops, Toledo and the adult who accompanied him in the middle of the night.

“That boy shouldn’t have been out at that hour,” a reader from Naperville told me last week. “His parents are to blame as much as those cops.”

This reaction has been a familiar one since Toledo’s killing. It’s instinctive for parents to react this way toward other parents when any child is not safely snug in their home or bedroom at, say, 2:30 a.m., when Toledo was on the streets with Roman.

There’s a part of me that also first feels this way toward parents in that awkward situation, especially if their child is in danger or a victim in some way. But then, almost immediately, I think of 14-year-old Tori Rhein and her parents.

At 2:30 a.m. on the morning of Oct. 25, 2003, Tori and her friend walked home from a friend’s house in a light drizzle along Airport Road in Portage. The teens’ parents thought both girls were safely at each other’s homes, if not in bed at that late hour.

At that moment, a 22-year-old motorist was driving home from a bar after a night of drinking. His body surged with booze, later registering a blood alcohol concentration of .27, more than three times the legal limit. Police said his vehicle swerved across the road’s centerline and struck Tori, missing her friend and two trees near a house.

As I wrote in a column afterward, “If Tori walked anywhere else in the city, she’d be here today. If the driver swerved anywhere else in the city, Tori would be here today. But he swerved at that precise spot and Tori died before police or firefighters arrived.”

Minutes later, Tori’s father, Tony Rhein, answered his front door to a police officer and a coroner. Rhein then woke up his wife, Valerie, to tell her the worst news imaginable. “It was ... just … horrible,” Rhein told me at the couple’s dining room table.

I instantly think of Tony and Valerie when I hear other parents play the blame game when a child or teen is not home when they should be in the middle of the night. The Rhein’s are wonderful, caring and protective parents to their other children, just as they were with Tori, who they called “Peanut.”

They were victimized that night by a drunken driver and the cruel steering wheel of fate. Tori, a bubbly eighth-grader, found herself at the exact wrong spot at the exact wrong moment. It was truly any parent’s worst nightmare, cliché or not.

I’ve since become friends with Tony, who’s allowed me to shadow him as visited his daughter’s grave site to keep her memory alive. My thought while watching him grieve — this could have been me.

When I was a young parent, my teenage son once sneaked out of our apartment with a friend for a night of harmless mischief. I had no idea he was gone until I got a call later. I don’t remember the silly details but nothing happened to him or his friend. Just young boys being boys. However, I’ve never forgotten what could have happened.

Anything could have happened. And it would be as much my fault as his. Every parent knows this. They don’t need to be told it by other parents or uncaring critics. I’m sure Adam Toledo’s parents and family feel such anguish in the wake of his death.

I’m not saying Toledo is innocent of any wrongdoing on that early morning. He was obviously doing something he shouldn’t have been doing, and allegedly with a gun in his hand. (Video of the events that led to his death have not been released publicly at the time I’m writing this column.)

What I’m saying is that it’s wrong to cast blame on Toledo’s parents in such a reflexive manner simply because their son was not home in bed that night. This kind of blanket indictment against every parent or guardian in these situations is premature, uncompassionate and possibly hypocritical.

If you were (or are) the parent of a teenager, you should know that it’s possible your child is not where you think they are every single night of their adolescence. It’s not as simple or quaint as those public service announcements from my youth: “Do you know where your children are?”

That PSA became popularized when I was a teenager, back when nightly curfews were enacted in large cities, including Gary, where I was raised. My friends and I still sneaked out without my parent’s knowledge, probably to this day.

My point: let police investigate Toledo’s killing; let justice crawl through the courts; and let Toledo’s parents mourn their son’s death without being blamed by armchair parents who could be in their guilt-ridden situation.

Regardless of its legal circumstances, they already feel … just … horrible.

jdavich@post-trib.com