Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was fatally shot by Cleveland police Nov. 22, is “looking for a conviction” for both of the officers who were on the scene at the time of her son’s death, ABC News reports.
“Tamir was a bright child. He had a promising future. He was very talented in all sports. He was just a wonderful kid. Everybody loved him. He was very helpful, very careful, very kind, and he was my baby. He’s the youngest out of four,” Rice said about her son.
In an exclusive interview with ABC, the grieving mother said that she wants the “police [to] be accountable for what they did to my son. I’m looking for a conviction for both of the officers.”
Rice also revealed that her 14-year-old daughter was cuffed and placed into the cruiser. The teenager said that she was tackled. “When they finally let my daughter … go, my daughter told me that the police had tackled her and put her in handcuffs and put her in the back of the car,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe they tackled her and put her in handcuffs and put her … in the same police car that was on the grass that the officer got out of and shot her brother, so my daughter is sitting there looking at her brother on the ground.”
The family has also recently filed a wrongful death suit against the city and the two officers involved in Tamir’s shooting death, claiming that the officers acted recklessly and that the police left the little boy on the ground bleeding without medical attention, ABC News notes.
“The family is focused on getting justice for Tamir. They are very concerned because they look at what happened in the Garner case, where there was no indictment, where a man was choked on video and the local officials did not indict him, so they are very concerned about the local prosecution,” family attorney Benjamin Crump told ABC.
Read more at ABC News.