CLEVELAND – A grand jury has decided not to indict the officers involved in the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in a Cleveland park.
The boy was armed with a pellet gun when the shooting occurred.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty said Monday that the evidence did not warrant charges for the two officers involved, calling it simply “a perfect storm of human error.”
The boy was shot after authorities received a report of a man pointing and waving a gun outside a recreation center in November 2014.
The officer who fired at Rice, Timothy Loehmann, told investigators he repeatedly ordered the boy to “show me your hands” then saw him pulling a weapon from his waistband before opening fire.
Officer Frank Garmback, a veteran, was with him but did not fire any shots.
Rice was carrying a nonlethal, airsoft gun that shoots plastic pellets when Loehmann shot him.
Rice died a day later.
Previous reports concluded that Loehmann shot Rice within two seconds of opening his car door.
The new analysis suggested it happened even faster, within less than a second, according to a recent review by California-based shooting reconstruction expert Jesse Wobrock.
With the patrol car windows rolled up, Rice could not have heard commands to show his hands, Wobrock claimed.
“The scientific analysis and timing involved do not support any claim that there was a meaningful exchange between Officer Loehmann and Tamir Rice, before he was shot,” Wobrock said.
Wobrock said comparing the location of a bullet hole in Rice’s jacket with the location of the wound on his body indicated that the boy had lifted his arm – with his hand in his pocket – at the moment he was shot.
Two other experts who previously reviewed the shooting for Rice’s family looked at the new frame-by-frame analysis — released by the county prosecutor — and also concluded Rice wasn’t reaching into his waistband when he was shot.
McGinty has come under fire for remarks claiming that the Rice family has “economic motives” in their continued calls for justice.
The boy’s mother has a federal lawsuit pending against the two officers and the city of Cleveland.
In June, a municipal court judge ruled there was enough evidence to charge Loehmann with murder and other charges in Rice’s death and to charge Garmback with reckless homicide or dereliction of duty.
