June 13--The FBI agent who treated Tamir Rice moments after he was shot by a Cleveland police officer last year told investigators that the officer who killed him looked shaken after the fatal rounds were fired, according to an interview in a sheriff's department investigation of the shooting.
The agent, whose name was withheld, was the first person to attempt to give medical aid to Tamir after Officer Timothy Loehmann shot the 12-year-old to death on Nov. 22, according to interviews and police documents.
"The officer seemed pretty concerned," the unidentified agent said, according to a transcript of an interview with Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department investigators. "Obviously very concerned and uh, I don't want to use the word like -- almost like shellshock; like they didn't know what to do."
The report was released by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty on Saturday and contains hundreds of pages of interview transcripts, police emails, medical examiner's findings and ballistics reports. It makes no recommendation on whether criminal charges should be filed in the case.
Loehmann killed Tamir after responding to reports of a person waving a gun. A 911 caller told police that the person was probably a child and that the gun was "probably fake," but that information was not relayed to the rookie officer.
Sheriff's investigators were repeatedly stonewalled in their attempts to find out why. The three dispatchers who handled calls related to Tamir's death initially refused to speak with investigators, citing advice from their union attorney.
They eventually relented weeks after they were served with subpoenas to appear before a grand jury, but the veteran police dispatcher who took the 911 call refused to say why she did not tell the officers about the caller's comments.
Shortly after the shooting, Loehmann told another officer that he had "no choice" but to shoot the boy as he held a toy weapon, according to the report.
"He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do," the officer said Loehmann told him at the scene.
Loehmann, who remained seated in a police vehicle with an injured ankle after the shooting, made similar remarks to the unidentified FBI agent, according to the report.
Many of the documents in the report were redacted to "exclude personal information, confidential medical records and reports not germane to the events of Nov. 22," McGinty said.
"Transparency (i.e., the actual facts) is essential for an intelligent discussion of the important issues raised by this case," Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty said in a statement released along with a report on the sheriff's department investigation of Tamir's death Saturday afternoon. "If we wait years for all litigation to be completed before the citizens are allowed to know what actually happened, we will have squandered our best opportunity to institute needed changes in use-of-force policy, police training and leadership."
McGinty's office is conducting its own review of the shooting and plans to present the case to a grand jury later this year.
The release of the report comes a little over a month after Tamir's family complained that the investigation of the boy's death had taken far too long. The sheriff's department turned its findings over to McGinty's office on June 3, a little more than seven months after Tamir was shot. Grand jury hearings into the police-involved killings of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., were both completed within six months of their deaths.
The FBI agent and others described a chaotic scene in the park where Tamir was shot, according to the report. Tamir's brother allegedly charged toward officers and threatened them, according to the FBI agent. His sister was handcuffed and put in a police car.
Several officials who were at the park told detectives Tamir's mother was screaming at officers. A police department supervisor indicated her actions may have slowed medical personnel in treating her son.
"I'm gonna have all your jobs," Tamir's mother shouted, according to the report.
Tamir did not receive medical treatment until nearly four minutes after he was shot, according to the sheriff's department investigation. Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback, radioed for help and told medical personnel to rush to the area, according to the report.
Cleveland officers are given little medical training, a police supervisor told investigators, and none of the city's cruisers are outfitted with a first aid kit.
Loehmann and his partner were able to provide the FBI agent with only rubber gloves when he asked for medical supplies to treat Tamir, according to the report. While the FBI agent was the first to treat Tamir, Garmback did help clear the boy's airway minutes later, the report said.
This week, a Cleveland municipal judge found probable cause to charge Loehmann with murder and several other offenses. His finding came days after a group of citizens and activists used a little-known Ohio law to argue for charges against the officers.
The judge also found probable cause to charge Garmback, who was Loehmann's partner that night, with negligent homicide.
While the ruling has no legal bearing on the case, experts have said the fact that a sitting judge found probable cause to charge the officers could influence grand jurors, who unlike trial jurors are allowed to review media reports of a pending criminal matter.
In Loehmann's defense, police have said that he warned the boy to drop the weapon, and union leaders said Loehmann had no choice but to fire since he believed Tamir, who was black, had a weapon.
Many of the officers who arrived at the scene that night and saw the toy gun lying on the ground told investigators they also believed the weapon looked real. One described it as an "authentic firearm."
In separate interviews with investigators, the boy who lent Tamir the toy gun also said he had disassembled it earlier in the week and was unable to reattach the orange tip to the barrel of the toy gun, which made it more closely resemble a real firearm.
Tamir's death, which came months after police killed Garner and Brown, has become one of the main calls to action for demonstrators who have staged protests throughout the U.S. in the last year.
The sheriff's department took over the investigation earlier this year, and turned its findings over to McGinty's office June 3. Loehmann and Garmback did not cooperate with the sheriff's department during its investigation, according to Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Assn.
The officers did, however, make statements to Cleveland Police internal affairs and homicide investigators on the day of the shooting, Loomis previously told The Times.
Tension between prosecutors, residents and the police union has run high in recent months since another city police officer was acquitted on manslaughter charges for his role in a 2012 police chase that left two people dead.
In that case, prosecutors argued that the union was trying to insulate Officer Michael Beryl from criminal liability. Seven officers invoked their 5th Amendment rights at trial, including two who weren't facing criminal charges.
UPDATES
4:27 p.m.: Updated with more details from the report.
3:49 p.m.: Updated with additional details from the report.
2:43 p.m.: Updated with additional details from the report.
1:38 p.m.: Updated with details from the report.
This article was originally published at 12:32 p.m.
