City of Cleveland sends $500 ambulance bill to Tamir Rice’s estate

The City of Cleveland has taken a terrible, depressing situation and made it so much worse.

In a statement after the announcement, attorneys for the Rice family renewed their calls for the Department of Justice to investigate the shooting.

Rice, now one of the well-known people tied to the Black Lives Matter movement, was fatally shot by police officer Timothy Loehmann moments after the officer arrived at a Cleveland park on November 22, 2014.

Subodh Chandra, a lawyer for the Rice family, said the bill “adds insult to homicide”.

The creditor’s claim, filed in Cuyahoga County Probate Court on Wednesday, states that Tamir’s estate is overdue on a $500 payment for “emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense”. “Ms. Rice considers this harassment”.

Fifteen months after 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer, the city has filed a claim against his estate for the cost of his ambulance ride to the hospital. The gun Rice had been playing with was actually just a toy.

An email sent to the city’s assistant law director has not been responded to as of yet. “Subodh Chandra and I have never agreed on anything until now”, Steve Loomis, president of the police union, told CNN. “Truly disappointing but unfortunately not surprising”.

Video of the incident shows a patrol vehicle pull up on the snowy grass near a gazebo where Tamir is standing.

Garmback drove a police cruiser next to Tamir, and Loehmann shot him within two seconds.

In December 2015, a grand jury declined to indict the officers involved in the shooting, after Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty recommended the officers not be charged.