Police Kill 12-Year-Old Boy Wielding A Toy Gun

On Saturday, a policeman shot a 12-year-old boy who was holding a toy gun which resembles  a semiautomatic handgun. An orange safety marker, intended to identify a toy gun, had been removed and it wasn’t until after the weapon was recovered that investigators determined it was a BB gun.

 

Washington Post reported that the boy, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was sitting on swing outside a recreation center in Cleveland, wearing a camouflage hat and hiding a BB gun in his waistband on Saturday afternoon. A man told a 911 dispatcher that the boy was playing with the gun on the playground at Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, pulling it from his pants and pointing it at people, “scaring the s— out of everyone.” 

 

No one could ascertain that it was a toy gun because the  toy’s orange safety tip had apparently been removed. It looked so much as a real handgun. When two Cleveland police officers arrived at the scene, a rookie officer saw the boy beneath a gazebo, picking up the gun and tucking it into his waistband. Police said the officer ordered him to raise his hands, but he raised his shirt instead — reaching for the gun. The officer fired twice. One shot hit the boy in the stomach. 

 

The boy was rushed to the hospital but he died on Sunday from his injuries. A family friend, Gregory Henderson, said Tamir was tall for his age. This is probably why the police could not notice that he was not a man weilding a gun but a boy playing with his toy.

 

“The officer had no clue he was a 12-year-old,” Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association president Jeff Follmer told the station. “He had no clue it was a toy gun, he was kind of shocked. He was concentrating more on the hands than on the age. It’s not, Go shoot a 12-year-old with a good fake gun.’ It’s not that scenario at all. This is a compassionate officer.”

 

He told the Plain Dealer: “We have to assume every gun is real. When we don’t, that’s the day we don’t go home.”