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The family of Tamir Rice has been told to pay a past-due balance of $500 for life support and ambulance services the 12-year-old received after he was shot and killed by a police officer in 2014.
His family said they were startled by the “insensitivity” of the claim, and a statement emailed to Mashable from the family’s attorney said it reflected “poor judgement” on behalf of the city whose officer killed Rice.
“The Rice family is disturbed by the city’s behavior,” the statement reads. “The callousness, insensitivity, and poor judgment required for the city to send a bill after its own police officers killed 12-year-old Tamir is breathtaking. This adds insult to homicide.”
Rice’s death launched protests and demonstrations after he was killed by a rookie police officer who’d heard on a broadcast that the boy had a gun. The officer, Timothy Loehmann, said he had yelled “show me your hands” to Rice, but surveillance video showed the officer firing shots within two seconds of leaving his vehicle. The gun Rice had been playing with was in fact a toy.
In December, a grand jury declined to indict Loehmann and a senior officer, Frank Garmback, in the shooting of Rice. At the time, the boy’s family accused prosecutor Timothy McGinty’s of “abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment.”
His mother, Samaria Rice, condemned the decision earlier this year, saying she was “mad as hell.”
“Due to the corrupt system, I have a dead child. I felt as if breath has been taken out of my body once again,” she said during an interview on MSNBC.
Take a look at the entire claim below.
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