Officer in Tamir Rice shooting: 'We were basically sitting ducks'
Officer who shot Tamir Rice said he believed he and his partner were in "immediate danger"
CNN/Stylemagazine.com Newswire | 4/26/2017, 1 p.m.
In November, Cleveland Officer Timothy Loehmann fired the fatal shots at Tamir within two seconds of arriving outside a recreation center where the sixth-grader was playing with a pellet gun.
(CNN) -- Two previously unseen video interviews with the police officers involved in 12-year-old Tamir Rice's death, recorded days after the shooting, provide new insight into their mindsets at the time. They also appear to be inconsistent with aspects of the officers' written testimony, an attorney for the Rice family said.
Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback gave the interviews to investigators a few days after Tamir's death on November 22, 2014. Cleveland.com first reported on the videos, which were provided to CNN by an attorney for the Rice family.
Loehmann, the officer who shot and killed Tamir, said in the video that he believed he saw a real gun and that he had to make a quick decision.
"The threat just became incredible, where I had to make the decision fast because Frank and I were in immediate danger," said Loehmann, an officer in training with Cleveland Police at the time.
"We were easy targets," he said. "Plus, I was stuck in the doorway, and my partner was still seated in the driver's seat, so we were basically sitting ducks."
Tamir was playing with a toy gun when a witness had called 911 to report that a person was brandishing a gun in a park, and noted that the person was "probably a juvenile" and that the gun was "probably a fake." However, that information was not relayed by the dispatcher to the responding officers.
Park video of the incident shows that Garmback, the driver of the vehicle, drove up to where Tamir was standing in the park. Loehmann shot him twice just seconds after exiting the car.
Loehmann and Garmback both said in written statements dated November 2015 they thought Tamir was pulling out a real gun. A grand jury declined to criminally charge the officers in 2015, although they do face administrative charges for possibly violating department rules.
Tamir's death sparked protests against police misconduct in Cleveland, becoming a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement and a flashpoint in the national debate about race and policing. The city of Cleveland agreed to pay the Rice family $6 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit last year.
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