Tamir Rice

Tamir Rice, 12, was shot and killed by rookie Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann on November 22, 2014, within two seconds of Loehmann's patrol car skidding to a stop beside him outside a recreation center. Rice had been playing with a pellet gun; the 911 caller told the dispatcher the gun was “probably fake” and the person waving it was “probably a juvenile,” but that information was never relayed to the responding officers. A grand jury declined to indict Loehmann or his partner, Frank Garmback, in December 2015, with the county prosecutor calling the shooting a “perfect storm of human error” rather than a crime. The Department of Justice closed a five-year federal civil rights investigation in December 2020 without charges. No one has ever been criminally charged in Tamir Rice's death.

Cleveland, OH · Cuyahoga County County

• 2014: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The shooting, the timing (within roughly two seconds of the patrol car's arrival), and Rice's death, per surveillance video and the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's public statements.
• The 911 caller's qualifications — that the gun was probably fake and the person was probably a juvenile — were not relayed by the dispatcher to Loehmann and Garmback before they arrived, per the prosecutor's own account.
• A Cuyahoga County grand jury declined to indict either officer on any charge in December 2015; prosecutor Timothy McGinty stated he had recommended against indictment.
• The U.S. Department of Justice concluded a five-year federal civil rights investigation in December 2020, finding insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rice had not been reaching for the pellet gun, and declined to bring charges.
• The City of Cleveland fired Loehmann in 2017 — explicitly not for the shooting, but for omitting from his job application that a previous department had found him emotionally unfit for police work.
• The city settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Rice's family for $6 million in 2016.
• Loehmann was hired by at least two other police departments after his firing, each time resigning or withdrawing following public backlash led by Rice's mother, Samaria Rice.

• Whether Rice was in fact reaching for the pellet gun in his waistband, as the prosecutor characterized enhanced surveillance video as showing, versus complying with an instruction, was disputed by the family's attorneys and never tested at a trial.
• Why the dispatcher did not relay the 911 caller's qualifications about the gun being probably fake has not been fully explained in any public accounting.
• The specific tactical decision to drive the patrol car directly up to Rice at close range, rather than approaching from a distance, was criticized by outside police-practice experts but was not the basis for any criminal charge.

• NPR — “Justice Department Declines To Prosecute Cleveland Officers In Death Of Tamir Rice”
• NPR — “Cleveland Grand Jury Declines To Indict Police Officers In Tamir Rice Probe”
• NBC News — “Cleveland police officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice fired”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs