News / Society

US cop who killed unarmed 12-year-old says he had ‘no choice’

Sunday, 14 June 2015 1:06 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 14 June 2015 1:15 AM ]

Tamir Rice

The Cleveland police officer who shot dead 12-year-old African American Tamir Rice has said that he is “very distraught” over his death but he had “no choice”.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty released a 224-page report on Saturday, revealing the officer’s account of the incident, in which the teenager was fatally shot after Timothy Loehmann, a Cleveland rookie cop, mistook his toy gun for a real one outside a Cleveland recreation center on November 22 last year.

"He gave me no choice. He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do,” Loehmann told a fellow officer moments after the shooting, according to the report.

After realizing how young the victim was and that the weapon he was carrying was actually a BB gun, Loehmann became "very distraught".

"The death of a citizen resulting from the use of deadly force by the police is different from all other cases and deserves a high level of public scrutiny," McGinty said in a statement, noting the release of the new info was in the interest of transparency.

“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.”

Rice died a day after the shooting at a hospital.

Loehmann and his colleague Frank Garmback, were responding to a 911 call, in which the caller had said the person carrying the gun might be juvenile and his weapon might be fake, descriptions the officers were not made aware of.

One officer said the toy replica gun looked "1,000%" real.

Rice’s death occurred outside the Cudell Recreation Center amid unrest across the United States fuelled by police shootings of several unarmed black men.

Black Lives Matter demonstrators poured into streets demanding justice for the teenager.