Officials in Cleveland were investigating the police shooting of a 12-year-old boy who died yesterday, a day after an officer shot him outside a recreation centre when he reached for a weapon that turned out to be a fake pistol. The boy, Tamir E Rice, died at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, the Cuyahoga County medical examiner’s office said. He was shot in the torso at a park on Saturday after witnesses reported that he was waving a gun around and pointing it at people, the police said.
Two police officers responded to the scene and ordered the boy to raise his hands, the police said, but he refused and reached for a gun in his waistband. An officer fired two shots, striking the boy once, the police said. In a 911 call released by the police, a man said that “a guy” who appeared to be a juvenile was pointing a pistol at people and scaring them. The caller said twice that the gun was “probably fake.” “There is a guy with a pistol,” the caller said. “It’s probably fake, but he’s pointing it at everybody.” The police were investigating what information from the call was relayed to the officers, said Jennifer Ciaccia, a police spokeswoman. The Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office was also investigating the shooting. The two officers were placed on administrative leave, and one of the officers was taken to a hospital for an injury to his ankle, the police said. The boy lived near the park and went there on Saturday with friends and family, a lawyer for his family, Timothy Kucharski, said yesterday. Mr Kucharski said he would conduct his own investigation into the shooting and review the police’s investigation to determine “how exactly an innocent young 12-year-old boy could be killed playing at the park.”
“His mother is devastated,” Mr Kucharski said. “We’d love to have the prayers of the community right now.” The shooting of the boy, who was African-American, came as a grand jury is expected to make a decision soon over whether to charge a white police officer who shot an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, setting off months of protests.
Mr Kucharski said that he did not know the race of the officer who shot the boy, and the shooting did not appear to have anything to do with race. The important question, he said, was why the officers did not act with more caution because they were dealing with a child.
“The police have to address these things in the proper context,” he said. “This is a 12-year-old boy. This is not a grown man. I’d think you would handle situations with children differently than you would with an adult. They don’t fully understand everything that is going on.”
The shooting happened about 3.30pm at the Cudell Recreation Center on the city’s west side, the police said. Deputy Chief Ed Tomba of the Cleveland police said on Saturday that the boy had not threatened the officers or pointed the weapon at them.
The police learned that the gun was fake after the shooting, Ciaccia said. The weapon was an “airsoft” replica gun resembling a semiautomatic pistol, with the orange safety tip removed, the police said. “It looks really, really real, and it’s huge,” Ciaccia said.
NYT