Grand jury declines to indict Cleveland officers in fatal shooting of Tamir Rice
A grand jury has declined to indict either Cleveland police officer involved in the 2014 fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said Monday.
Timothy Loehmann, who fired at Rice in a park after responding to a 911 call with fellow officer Frank Garmback, has said he believed Rice's toy gun was real. The 911 caller cautioned that the gun was likely fake, information that was not passed onto Loehmann and Garmback, The New York Times reports.
McGinty, whose office had recommended not charging the officers, called the shooting a "perfect storm of human error," and maintained that it was a "tragic accident" as opposed to a crime.
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"Now it is time for the community and all of us to start to heal," McGinty said.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.