Samaria Rice says she’s “looking for a conviction” of the officer who shot and killed her 12-year-old son, Tamir.
After a neighbor called the police to complain about an adolescent waving a “probably fake” gun—in reality, a pellet gun—Officer Timothy Loehmann arrived on the scene. Loehmann’s previous employer, the police department in Independence, Ohio, had dismissed him after declaring his performance at firearms training “dismal.” As one might expect, given the particulars of the situation, Loehmann shot and killed Tamir almost immediately after arriving on the scene.
The entire gruesome event was captured on video.
Speaking with ABC News in Cleveland, Samaria Rice told a tale even more horrifying than watching officers gun down her son. Officers, she said, also tackled and handcuffed her 14-year-old daughter and threatened to detain Rice herself.
She has already filed a wrongful death suit, and a grand jury will decide later whether to press charges against Loehmann.
Tamir is the youngest unarmed black American to be shot and killed by a white police officer this year, but he is far from the only one. Police in Phoenix, Arizona killed Rumain Brisbon after thinking a bottle of pills in his pocket was a weapon. Two grand juries recently declined to indict Officers Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., and Daniel Pantaleo in Staten Island, N.Y., for their respective killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
H/T ABC News | Illustration by Max Fleishman
