Surveillance Video Shows Police Shooting of 12-Year-Old Boy at Cleveland Park

A surveillance video released by the Cleveland Division of Police Wednesday show the sequence of events that preceded the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old boy Saturday, as well as the shooting itself.

Tamir Rice died early Sunday from a gunshot to the abdomen around 3:30 p.m. Saturday. The police had been called to Cudell Recreation Center in west Cleveland after someone called 9-1-1 and reported seeing a “guy with a gun pointing it at people.”

It later turned out that the handgun was a realistic-looking “airsoft” pellet gun with the orange safety tab on the barrel removed.

Rice’s shooting death has created tense conditions in Cleveland, with protests continuing downtown since the incident, including on Wednesday after the video was released.

The grainy, jumpy surveillance video, taken some distance from the incident, shows the boy later identified as Tamir Rice strolling back and forth on the sidewalk, holding a pistol, and then moving over to a picnic shelter and sitting down. Toward the end of the 7:52 video, a police cruiser suddenly shows up from stage right in the video, skidding to a half on the snow-covered grass within a few feet of the shelter. The officer on the passenger side, later identified as rookie Patrolman Timothy Loehmann, jumps out of the car as it comes to a halt and immediately fires point-blank at the 12-year-old boy, who had stood up. He drops to the ground. It’s been established that the officer fired two shots, though that’s not apparent on the video.

Police have said the boy was pulling the airsoft gun from his waistband.

The Northeast Ohio Media Group has the full video and an edited shorter clip, on its website. The video was released Wednesday by the Cleveland Division of Police. It has no audio track.

Earlier this week, the NEOMG reported a police source saying that the caller told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that the pistol was “probably fake,” but the responding officers never got that information.

Another NEOMG report Wednesday said that Cleveland police waited four minutes to administer first aid to Tamir Rice after he was shot.

According to the NEOMG report, Rice remained on the grass beside the cruiser’s passenger side for four minutes as Loehmann, 26, took position behind the trunk and his partner, the driver, stayed on the other side near Rice’s body. This part of the incident is not shown on the video released by police.

The visual with this article is a screenshot from the police-released video, showing the moments after Tamir Rice had been shot, when the two police officers took position, apparently waiting to see if he made any moves.