Cleveland police have released the names of the two officers involved in the shooting death of a 12-year-old boy along with a surveillance video of the incident showing an officer firing shots within seconds of leaving his police car.
Timothy Loehmann, 26, and Frank Garmback, 46, responded to a 911 call Saturday about a young man wielding a gun in a park, which led to Loehmann shooting and killing Tamir Rice, 12. He died Sunday after being shot in the torso while holding what turned out to be a BB gun. Loehmann fired the fatal shot from about 10 feet away.
Attorneys for the boy's family watched the video earlier this week, and the family eventually watched it as well before asking authorities to release the full footage.
'The release of this video is in no means an effort to try and explain the actions of the division of police or of the young man,' Deputy Police Chief Edward Tomba said at a news conference Wednesday - hours after about 200 people protesting the fatal shooting blocked traffic on a busy Cleveland street. 'We are honoring the wishes of the family in releasing this and also in the spirit of being open and fair with our community.'
Loehmann has been a Cleveland police officer since March, and Garmback joined the force in February 2008. Both are on administrative leave, per department policy.
According to police, witnesses reported seeing Rice waving a gun and pointing it at people in a park. During Wednesday's press conference, authorities played a 911 call in which a man tells a dispatcher 'there's a guy in here with a pistol, pointing it at everybody.' The caller says the gun is 'probably fake' and then says: 'I don't know if it's real or not.' He describes Rice as 'probably a juvenile.'
Information about the gun possibly being fake wasn't mentioned to the officers, according to a dispatch recording that was played Wednesday.
A grainy black-and-white video shows the caller sitting under a park gazebo while Rice walks around the park, at times swinging the gun in his hands. He also points the gun in a ready-to-shoot motion. In the video, which does not have audio, the caller is seeing leaving as Rice sits under a gazebo.
A police cruiser eventually arrives. Tomba said on Wednesday that Loehmann shouted through his passenger-side car door three times for Rice to show his hands as he approached the car. Loehmann shot Rice within two seconds of exiting the patrol car.
Police had earlier said two shots were fired by a single officer, and and that Rice had reached into his waistband when Loehmann shouted the commands.
The gun turned out to be an Airsoft gun. Authorities had said it resembled a semiautomatic handgun and lacked the orange safety marker intended to signal that it's a fake.
Police also played the dispatch call one of the officers made after the shooting. 'Shots fired, male down, um, black male, maybe 20,' one of the officers radioed in. 'Black hand gun.'
Within four minutes of the shooting, two other law enforcement officials arrived, and one performed first aid on Rice, Tomba said. Minutes later, an ambulance arrived.
The investigation into the shooting continues and police are still looking for witnesses. The officers have already given statements.
The case will be sent to a grand jury for possible charges, according to Reuters.
As people around the country protested a grand jury's decision in the Darren Wilson case, demonstrations in Cleveland centered around Rice's death. On Tuesday night, 200 protesters took to a city square and spilled into the street, the Plain Dealer reported.
The protests remained peaceful and there were no arrests, the paper reported.
From the #Cleveland protest yesterday #clevelandtoferguson #TamirRice #MikeBrown #TaneshaAnderson http://ift.tt/1HGm1d4
- Tamir Rice (@crtx216) November 26, 2014
Earlier today in downtown #Cleveland protestors block two sides of the highway (Route 2). #TamirRice #MikeBrown http://ift.tt/1vkNvP1
- Abbas Hamideh (@Resistance48) November 26, 2014
The Cleveland protest for Tamir Rice and Michael Brown in tweets and pics. http://t.co/0unoEWoUkI @DreKnott http://ift.tt/1HGm2h3
- The Triv Show (@TheTrivShow) November 25, 2014
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said Monday that Rice's death wasn't connected to what was happening in Ferguson. 'We're attempting to be as transparent as we can at this time in order for people to know we do care. This hurts us,' Jackson said, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Entities 0 Name: Loehmann Count: 6 1 Name: Rice Count: 6 2 Name: Cleveland Count: 5 3 Name: Tamir Rice Count: 2 4 Name: Tomba Count: 2 5 Name: Edward Tomba Count: 1 6 Name: Frank Garmback Count: 1 7 Name: Abbas Hamideh Count: 1 8 Name: Garmback Count: 1 9 Name: Darren Wilson Count: 1 10 Name: Frank Jackson Count: 1 11 Name: Reuters Count: 1 12 Name: Wall Street Journal Count: 1 13 Name: Jackson Count: 1 14 Name: Timothy Loehmann Count: 1 15 Name: Michael Brown Count: 1 16 Name: Ferguson Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1y88yq1 Title: Police: Video clearly shows shooting of Ohio boy, 12 Description: Surveillance video is "very clear on what took place" at a Cleveland playground when a rookie police officer fatally shot a 12-year-old boy brandishing a fake gun, police said Monday. Tamir Rice was shot twice in the torso Saturday afternoon and died at a hospital Sunday morning.
