Weeks after her son’s shooting death, the mother of Tamir Rice decided to speak out for the first time on Monday. At the press conference, she accused police officers of seriously mishandling the situation and mistreating her and her family moments after her son’s shooting occurred. She believes that the two officers involved, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, should be indicted for their actions.
Last month, 12-year-old Tamir was fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer after playing with a pellet gun at a local playground. A witness told 911 dispatchers that the gun was “probably” fake, but that Tamir was scaring people with it. According to reports, that information was not passed along to Officers Loehmann and Garmback, who arrived at the scene shortly after.
Police say Officer Loehmann shot Tamir as he reached for his gun in his waistband. They say the orange tip that is supposed to appear on all toy guns was removed, making it appear like a real gun. According to Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, the toy gun came from one of Tamir’s friends.
In the press conference held at a Baptist Church, Rice recalled how her daughter was tackled for trying to run to her younger brother after the shooting. She clams her daughter was then handcuffed and put in the back seat of the police car.
“I asked the police to let my daughter go and they wouldn’t at that time and I asked them, ‘What’s going on?’ But they wasn’t telling me anything, just saying, ‘Calm down, calm down,” she said. Rice also recalled how police stopped her from running to her son’s aid as he laid dying on the pavement floor. “I went charging and yelling and everything at the police because they wouldn’t let me through.”
According to Rice, police officers even made her choose between going to the hospital with her son Tamir or staying with her daughter. “Of course, I go with the 12-year-old,” she said. But even then, she says she wasn’t allowed to ride in the back of the ambulance with her son and was forced to ride in the front passenger seat instead.
Apart from mistreating her family, Rice says the biggest injustice was how the two police officers, Loehmann and Garmback, allegedly just stood by Tamir’s body without providing him any aid minutes after the shooting occurred.
At the press conference, Tamir’s mom was accompanied by attorney Benjamin Crump, who is currently representing the Rice family. Crump was the same attorney who just recently represented the families of Treyvon Martin and Michael Brown. Crump said the Rice family is “very distrustful” of the current state of the justice system especially after the grand jury rulings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
“There is nothing written anywhere in the law that police officers are going to be treated any different than any other,” Crump said.
All the family asks for now is a fair and just investigation into the shooting death of young Tamir—a boy who “had a promising future.”
“He was just a wonderful kid,” Rice said. “He was my baby.”
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