A Cleveland police officer shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice about two seconds after the officer and a partner pulled up in a car to investigate reports that someone was brandishing a gun at a park, surveillance video that police released Wednesday shows.
Tamir, who had what police said is an air gun that looked like a real firearm, died Sunday, a day after he was shot outside a recreation center.
Police also released two audio recordings Wednesday — a 911 call preceding the shooting and a tape of a dispatcher asking officers to go to the park.
The shooting happened after a person called 911 to report that a black male — “probably a juvenile” — was pointing “a pistol” at people outside the recreation center. Twice the caller said the gun might be fake.
The dispatcher radioed to officers about a black male who was “pointing a gun at people,” but did not mention that caller’s belief that he could be a minor and that the gun might not be a real firearm, one of the released recordings shows.
Police previously said it wasn’t clear if the responding officers received the information about the suspect’s age or the gun possibly being fake.
Authorities are investigating the shooting, and the two officers — identified Wednesday by police as Timothy Loehmann, 26, and Frank Garmback, 46 — are on leave from their jobs.
Loehmann joined the department in March, Tomba said.
Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba stressed that his department released the video at the request of Tamir’s relatives, who had seen it privately with authorities’ permission.
“We are honoring the wishes of the family,” Tomba said. ” … This is an obvious tragic event.”
The video shows Tamir walking along a sidewalk and eventually sitting on a picnic table bench under a gazebo Saturday afternoon, sometimes pointing what appears to be a handgun.
Eventually, Tamir emerges from the bench and walks to the edge of the gazebo. A police car drives up to the gazebo, leaving the road and rolling over snowy grass to do so.
One of the officers — the one in the passenger seat — told Tamir three times to “show your hands,” Tomba told reporters.
“(The officer’s) door was open as they pulled up,” Tomba said. “He yelled three times as they pulled up.”
The eight-minute surveillance video has no audio.
Police have said Tamir reached into his waistband and pulled out the weapon. The video shows the passenger-side officer exiting the car, and Tamir falls down, apparently shot.
Between 1.5 to two seconds elapsed from the time the car pulled up to the moment Tamir was shot, Tomba said. At that point, only the passenger-side officer was out of the car, the video shows.
One of the officers, radioing to dispatch, reported that a “black male, maybe 20,” was down, according to the released radio traffic between the officers and dispatchers.
The passenger was Loehmann, Tomba said.
The driver was Garmback, who has been with the force since February 2008, according to Tomba.
Investigators determined that Tamir’s weapon was an air gun, and that an orange tip that is meant to indicate that it’s not a real firearm had been removed, police said.
