Over 6 Months Later And The Cop Who Shot 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Has Yet to Be Questioned

Cleveland, Ohio – This week, it was reported that the officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice last November has still not been questioned by investigators in regards to the murder.

The police department recently announced that they would soon be ready to conclude their investigation, but a report from Mother Jones revealed last week that the officers involved were not yet questioned by investigators, although they made a number of attempts to reach out to the officers.

According to Mother Jones:

Mother Jones has learned that the two officers involved in the shooting—Timothy Loehmann, who fired the shots, and Frank Garmback, who drove the police car—still have not been interviewed by investigators from the sheriff’s department. According to an official familiar with the case, investigators have made more than one attempt to interview Loehmann and Garmback since the Cleveland Police Department handed over the case in January.

During the course of the investigation, the Rice family was forced to pay $75 per day to keep Tamir’s body refrigerated in case additional medical examinations needed to be done. As we reported last week, the boy’s surviving mother has recently moved into a homeless shelter because she can’t continue to live right in front of the place where the police killed her child. However, in light of this new information, it would seem that the tens of thousands of dollars the family was forced to pay could be largely responsible for her current state of homelessness.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, thus far the police department has indicated that they believe that the 12-year-old boy was responsible for his own murder because he was playing with a toy gun in public.

The most disturbing details of the case include the fact that Timothy Loehmann fired the fatal shots just seconds after exiting the police vehicle, showing absolutely no hesitation when shooting. Also, the officers waited minutes before calling an ambulance and failed to provide the boy with any medical care, effectively striking down any second chance that he had at life.

Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice spoke out at a press conference last year about the shooting. She said that not only was her 12-year-old son shot by officer Timothy Loehmann, but her 14-year-old daughter was immediately detained, handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police car for crying about her brother being shot.

A quick look into the history of officer Timothy Loehmann, shows that he has a short and troubled past with police work. In fact, Loemann was actually terminated from his last job as a police officer, because they did not think that he was mentally capable, or mature enough for the job. He was let go by the City of Independence Police Department in December of 2012, and then was quickly rehired with the Cleveland Police Department in March of last year.