Posted on 12/12/2014 10:59:03 AM PST by Citizen Zed
The death of a 12-year-old Cleveland boy fatally shot by police in November has been formally ruled a homicide, according to a county autopsy report released on Friday that found he was struck once in the abdomen.
Tamir Rice, who was black, was shot on Nov. 22 by a white police officer responding to a call of a suspect waving a handgun around in a Cleveland park. The weapon turned out to be a replica that typically fires plastic pellets. The sixth-grader died the next day.
The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's autopsy report said Rice sustained a single wound to the left side of his abdomen that traveled from front to back and lodged in his pelvis.
The shooting came at a time of heightened national scrutiny of police use of force and two days before a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Rice was shot less than two seconds after the police car pulled up beside him in the park, police have said. They also released a security video of Rice in the park before and during the shooting.
Rice was 5 feet 7 inches tall and 195 pounds, according to the autopsy report.
(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.reuters.com ...
Just to please the mob?
Homicide means he died at the hands of another human being. It is not the same as murder.
One of my stupid in-laws committed an armed robbery with a pellet pistol. He was caught and charged just as if it were real.
Duh! It wasn't natural causes or an accident. One person killed another therefore it was a homicide. If someone breaks into my house and threatens to kill me and I shoot him it is a justifiable homicide. The coroner doesn't make ruling on whether the killing was justified, just that it happened and what evidence can be obtained from the body.
Of course it’s a “homicide.” Any killing is a homicide. A homicide may or may not be a crime depending on the circumstances. Not really news IMO.
The question is, was the homicide criminal.
Big kid. Adds a little context.
Tragic...but not actionable.Criminally *or* civilly.
I think so.
5’7” and 195 pounds is a very big 12 year old. I’m not defending the officer but he probably didn’t look like a young boy playing with a toy gun. With the hysteria that always follows mass shootings the officer could have felt a great deal of anxiety and pressure to protect everyone at the park.
“The death of a 12-year-old Cleveland boy fatally shot by police in November has been formally ruled a homicide”
Duh ... Of course it is a homicide. But not all homicides are a crime.
Exactly. This is stupid. Of course it was homicide. He didn't die from ebola or a car accident.
The real question is was it criminal homicide or justifiable homicide?
I understand that, but we’ll see if the charges follow.
A lot depends on the presence of that orange tip, or not.
Which keeps tickling my mind...
why wouldn’t a criminal paint his REAL weapon with an orange tip just to give him that one second’s hesitation advantage?
Of course it was homicide...the kid didn’t shoot himself.
And then there’s this article:
People painting their guns to make them look like toys. What’s a cop supposed to do? Wait to get shot?
The kid had no chance. The cop car rolled up to a few feet and the cop on the passenger side just shot him. Watch the video.
More specifically, it is called JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE.
(In our state we have both excusable homicide and justifiable homicide....the latter being when the state executes a prisoner, cops shooting a fleeing felon, etc.)
“With the hysteria that always follows mass shootings the officer could have felt a great deal of anxiety and pressure to protect everyone at the park.”
You’re probably right on that!
Exactly.
It’s been obvious since it happened that this was a homicide.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.