According to reports, a police officer who shot and killed a 12-year-old Cleveland boy will not face criminal charges. Neither will the officer who was with him.
An Ohio grand jury decided not to indict officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback after they shot Tamir Rice in a recreation center park area last year, prosecutor Tim McGinty told reporters Monday.
“Given this perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications by all involved that day, the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police,” McGinty said.
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Loehmann, an officer-in-training, shot Rice on Nov. 22, 2014. Garmback was training him.
“It is likely that Tamir, whose size made him look much older and who had been warned his pellet gun might get him into trouble that day, either intended to hand it over to the officers or show them it wasn’t a real gun,” McGinty said. “But there was no way for the officers to know that, because they saw the events rapidly unfolding in front of them from a very different perspective.”
The prosecutor said that a recent FBI video analysis showed Tamir “was drawing his gun from his waist as the police slid toward him and Officer Loehmann exited the car.” It turns out, officers found out after the shooting that the gun was a toy pellet gun.
In a statement released Monday night, Rice’s family accused the prosecutor’s office of mishandling the case.
“Prosecutor McGinty deliberately sabotaged the case, never advocating for my son, and acting instead like the police officers’ defense attorney,” the statement said. “In a time in which a non-indictment for two police officers who have killed an unarmed black child is business as usual, we mourn for Tamir, and for all of the black people who
have been killed by the police without justice. In our view, this process demonstrates that race is still an extremely troubling and serious problem in our country and the criminal justice system.”Activists and watchers of the case are also outraged at the news with some across the country taking to the streets to protest and advocate for reform.