Frame-by-frame images of Tamir Rice shooting released in ‘spirit of openness’
12-year-old African American boy was fatally shot by white police office while holding pellet gun.
Prosecutors in Ohio on Saturday released a frame-by-frame analysis of the surveillance camera footage first made public a year ago that shows a white Cleveland police officer fatally shooting a black 12-year-old boy who had a pellet gun.
The additional images taken from surveillance video at a recreation centre where Tamir Rice was shot and killed don't appear to contain any new or substantive information. The new footage was released in the “spirit of openness,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty.
The analysis also doesn't show whether Tamir, as police officials have maintained, was reaching into his waistband for the pellet gun when then-rookie patrolman Timothy Loehmann shot him less than two seconds after getting out of the car.
The enhancement by a video expert will be presented to a grand jury that will decide if Loehmann or his field training officer should be charged criminally for Tamir's death. Loehmann shot Tamir outside Cudell Recreation Centre on November 22, 2014.
Saturday's release of the enhancement comes the same day that attorneys for the boy's family asked the prosecutor to allow their use-of-force experts to testify before the grand jury. The request follows the release of reports by use-of-force experts hired by prosecutors that concluded the shooting was justified because the officers had no way of knowing that Tamir's pellet gun wasn't a real firearm.
Loehmann and Frank Garmback were sent to a Cleveland recreation centre after a man called 911 to report that a man was waving a gun and pointing it at people. The caller told the dispatcher that the gun might not be real. The call also said the man might be a juvenile, but that information wasn't passed on to the officers.