No Indictment in Tamir Rice Case

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty told the public on Monday that although the killing of Tamir Rice was a tragedy, no crime was committed. The grand jury has declined to charge the Cleveland police officer or his partner in the death of the 12-year-old killed back in November of 2014.

Rice was shot and killed outside of a recreational center where he was “carrying a plastic airsoft gun that fired nonlethal plastic projectiles and was a replica of an actual firearm. He had borrowed it that morning from a friend who warned him to be careful because the gun looked real.”

McGinty called the incident “tragic” and “a perfect storm of human error,” but said that he did agree with the decision not to indict.

Assistant County Prosecutor Matthew Meyer said prosecutors recommended to the grand jury that “no charges be filed in the case because they did not believe that ‘any reasonable judge or jury would find criminal conduct.’”

McGinty said that Rice most likely meant to show the officers his gun was a toy, but the judge also asserted that there would be no way for the officers to have known this to be the case on that snowy day. He pointed out that the failure of communication by the dispatcher to the Cleveland officers was key in the case; information about the gun most likely being “fake” was never relayed.

Meyer added more insight as to why no indictment was made (via Fox News):

“Viewing the video alone, however, provides an incomplete picture,” Assistant County Prosecutor Matthew Meyer said Monday.

Meyer showed magnified frames of Rice in the hours before the shooting, repeatedly pulling the gun out from his pants and pointing it at other people in the recreation center, sometimes at a close range. A witness who had been standing with Rice earlier in the day told authorities that Rice was pulling the gun out “like robbers do.”

At one point during the news conference, Meyer held the model of Rice’s airsoft gun alongside a real weapon the pellet gun was modeled after.

“To someone who is in a stressful encounter, however, who doesn’t know if the gun is real or fake, it is impossible to tell,” Meyer said.

USA Today reports that the family of Tamir Rice has since “reiterated its request that the Department of Justice investigate Tamir’s death.”

“The way prosecutor McGinty has mishandled the grand jury process has compounded the grief of this family,” read the statement.