A white Cleveland patrolman who shot a 12-year-old black boy carrying a pellet gun told investigators that he and his partner continuously yelled \u201cshow me your hands\u201d before he fired the fatal shots, according to the officer\u2019s statement released by prosecutors Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The rookie officer said that Tamir Rice didn\u2019t obey his commands and that he saw the boy pulling a weapon out of his waist band.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew it was a gun and I knew it was coming out,\u201d officer Timothy Loehmann said in the statement given to investigators.<\/p>\n
It turned out Tamir was carrying a nonlethal, Airsoft-type gun that shoots plastic pellets when Loehmann shot him twice outside a recreation center on Nov. 22, 2014. He died a day later.<\/p>\n
A grand jury will decide if Loehmann or his field training officer should be charged criminally for Tamir\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors in recent weeks released a frame-by-frame analysis of the surveillance camera footage from the shooting, along with expert reports that called the shooting justified.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for the Rice family have asked Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty to step aside and allow a special prosecutor to take over the case. They called the prosecutor\u2019s presentation to the grand jury \u201cbiased\u201d and \u201cimproper\u201d after releasing the reports that found no fault with the officers\u2019 actions.<\/p>\n
They said Tuesday that allowing both officers to make unsworn statements that won\u2019t be subject to cross examination \u201cfurther taints these proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statements from Loehmann and patrolman Frank Garmback describe in detail action that the surveillance video shows took about two seconds.<\/p>\n
They were responding after a 911 caller reported that a man was waving a gun and pointing it at people. The caller told the dispatcher that the gun might not be real. The call also said the man might be a juvenile, but that information wasn\u2019t passed on to the officers.<\/p>\n
Loehmann said he and his partner thought Tamir was going to run as they drove up to him, but Tamir turned toward the cruiser.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe suspect lifted his shirt, reached down into his waistband. We continued to yell \u2018show me your hands,\u2019\u201d Loehmann said in the statement. \u201cI was focused on the suspect. Even when he was reaching into his waistband, I didn\u2019t fire. I still was yelling the command \u2018show me your hands.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The rookie officer said he was getting out of the cruiser when he saw a weapon in the boy\u2019s hand coming out his waistband. \u201cThe threat to my partner and myself was real and active,\u201d Loehmann said.<\/p>\n
He said he fired two shots and heard his partner still yelling \u201cshow me your hands\u201d after Tamir fell to the ground.<\/p>\n
Garmback, who was driving the cruiser, said in his statement that he wanted to keep the boy away from the recreation center and that the patrol car slid when he hit the brakes. The car didn\u2019t stop where he intended, Garmback said.<\/p>\n
He said he saw the gun Tamir was carrying when Loehmann opened his door. \u201cI thought the gun was real,\u201d Garmback said.<\/p>\n
Subodh Chandra, an attorney for Tamir\u2019s family, said Tuesday that the officers\u2019 statements were contradictory and did not make sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cLoehmann, for example, insists that he observed things and took action that would have been physically impossible for any human being to do in the under two seconds it took him to shoot a 12-year-old child,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Chandra also noted that Loehmann said he issued at least three commands to \u201cshow me your hands,\u201d but that Garmback said he thought the cruiser\u2019s windows were rolled up as they drove toward Tamir.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Associated Press writer Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A white Cleveland patrolman who shot a 12-year-old black boy carrying a pellet gun told investigators that he and his partner continuously yelled \u201cshow me your hands\u201d before he fired the fatal shots, according to the officer\u2019s statement released by prosecutors Tuesday. The rookie officer said that Tamir Rice didn\u2019t obey his commands and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2401"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}