A decade ago, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police while he was playing with a toy gun near Cudell Park.
When Tamir died in 2014, he was the youngest of four children. His mother, Samaria Rice, said he was still playing with Hot Wheels and watching cartoons.
His death would resonate beyond Cleveland as he became a national symbol in the Black Lives Matter movement.
The shooting
On the afternoon of Nov. 22, 2014, Cleveland police responded to Cudell Recreation Center for a report of someone “waving a gun” around outside.
The caller in the park adjacent to Cudell Recreation Center saw Tamir playing with an airsoft gun, which shoots plastic pellets. He had told the dispatcher the person may be a child and the gun may be a toy, but that information was never communicated to the officers who arrived on the scene.
Surveillance video that was released days after the shooting showed Tamir at a picnic table in the area, pointing and waving said gun. The gun resembled a real firearm because its tell-tale orange tip had been removed.
Police said officers told Tamir three times to put his hands up through an open car door as they pulled up to the scene. Officers said Tamir reached for his waistband, leading Officer Timothy Loehmann to fire shots at the boy, striking him.
The surveillance video showed that Loehmann shot Tamir within several seconds of the patrol car, driven by Officer Frank Garmback, skidding to a stop. Tamir was behind the police cruiser when the shooting occurred.
A First District officer and an FBI agent responded to the scene and applied First Aid to Tamir in less than four minutes of getting the call. Three minutes after that, EMS arrived. Tamir died at the hospital the following day.
His death was ruled a homicide in December 2014, as the cause of death was the result of a gunshot wound to his torso with injuries to a major vessel, intestines and pelvis.
Charges denied
Following the shooting, it was determined that Loehmann and Garmback did not violate any rules or policies of the Cleveland Division of Police related to the shooting itself. In December 2015, a grand jury refused to file charges against the two officers. Then, in 2020, the Justice Department refused to file federal criminal charges against them.
The reasoning behind the refusal to charge the officers is that the video of the shooting was of too poor a quality for them to establish what had happened.
Loehmann released the following statement in 2015 regarding the shooting:
“We are trained to get out of the cruiser because "the cruiser is a coffin." I observed the suspect pulling the gun out of the waistband with his elbow coming up. Officer Garmback and I were still yelling "show me your hands." With his hands pulling the gun out and his elbow coming up, I knew it was a gun and it was coming out. I saw the weapon in his hands coming out of his waistband and the threat to my partner and myself was real and active.”
Despite charges not being filed against the two officers, the City of Cleveland paid $6 million to Tamir's family to settle the wrongful death lawsuit in 2016 and 2017.
"At the end of the day, a 12-year-old child lost their life, and that should not have happened in the City of Cleveland," said former Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson at a press conference in 2016. "It should not have happened.”
Two and a half years after killing Tamir, Loehmann was fired from his position with the Cleveland Division of Police. However, it was not in regards to the shooting, but rather lying on his application and violating other administrative policies.
In January 2017, the City of Cleveland filed charges against Loehmann for failing to provide truthful information on his employment application regarding disciplinary actions, information surrounding his departure from a previous police department and failing a test in May 2013.
Cleveland police had previously confirmed to News 5 that upon hiring Loehmann, they did not review his personnel file with Independence police.
“The file revealed he was in the process of being fired for his lack of ‘maturity’ and an incident involving an emotional meltdown during firearm training when he resigned in December 2012.”
Additionally, charges were filed against Garmback for failing to employ proper tactics when he operated the patrol car the day Tamir was shot. He was also charged with failing to report his arrival time to radio dispatchers immediately upon his arrival at the recreation center.
Garmback faced a 10-day suspension in 2018, which was reduced to five days. Two other Cleveland police employees were also suspended in 2017.
Loehmann went to work with the police department in Bellaire, Ohio, as a part-time officer in 2018; however, he withdrew his application.
In 2019, The Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association filed an appeal to overturn the firing of Loehmann. The 8th District Court of Appeals dismissed his rehire appeal in 2021. He appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court in 2021 as well, and it refused to consider the appeal.
After failing to be rehired by Cleveland police, Loehmann was hired as the sole officer of Tioga, a small borough in Pennsylvania, in 2021; however, he withdrew his application shortly after being sworn in.
Then, in 2024, Loehmann was hired at a police department in West Virginia but quickly resigned due to the backlash he received.
A decade of honoring Tamir
Since Tamir’s death in 2014, communities nationwide have paid tribute to the 12-year-old.
But the biggest support has come from his mother Samaria.
Located on St. Clair Avenue in Cleveland is the Tamir Rice Afrocentric Cultural Center, which opened five years after Tamir’s death. Samaria started the Tamir Rice Foundation and the center to help advocate for youth. Click here to read more about Samaria’s efforts.
"Where I put all of my nurturing that I had for Tamir, I put it all in there," Samaria said back in 2019.
In 2020, Samaria wrote the foreword to Andratesha Fritzgerald’s book “Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning." In it, Samaria highlights how teachers can change instructional methods to improve outcomes for students of color. Fritzgerald signed copies of her book in Cleveland, and thanks to the community and the book’s publisher, the Tamir Rice Foundation received a $4,000 donation.
In 2021, Tamir's family asked the Justice Department to reopen the case into his death after it was closed and charges were not brought against the officers. However, according to an article from the Associated Press in 2022, the Justice Department said it would not reopen the case.
Several weeks after what would have been Tamir’s 20th birthday, a group gathered at Cudell Park to dedicate a memorial to him. The Rice family and supporters unveiled a marble and stone memorial etched with Tamir’s face and surrounded by a butterfly garden in 2022.
“This is the last memory that I have of my son - playing in the park as children should be able to play in parks in America,” Samaria said in 2022.
