The Tamir Rice case may finally be put to rest with the City of Cleveland agreeing to pay US$6 million to the family of Tamir Rice. Announced yesterday, the 25th of April, this settles the wrongful-death lawsuit that was filed by the estate of Tamir Rice and as part of the settlement, the city will not admit any wrong doing of Rice, who was 12 years old when the shooting happened on November 22, 2014.

The case is about police officers responding to a 911 call about a "of a male black sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people" in a city park. Two police officers, 26-year old Timothy Loehmann and 46-year-old Frank Garmback went to respond to the call and within 2 seconds upon arrival, Loehmann fired two shots with Rice being hit once in the torso. No first aid was administered to Rice and died the following day. The responding officers reported that Rice reached for his waistband upon their arrival leading to Loehmann to draw his gun and shoot Rice.

The gun that Rice wielded at the time of shooting was an airsoft replica.

The incident received national and international coverage, as the U.S.A was subject to intense scrutiny due to occurrence of black males being shot by the police.

At the time of the shooting happened, Rice was holding an airsoft gun that didn’t have an orange muzzle tip to help identify it as a replica. Also, the man who made the 911 call also said that the gun was “probably a fake” and also stated said about Rice “he is probably a juvenile”. However, the information  was not relayed to the responding police officers.  It was also revealed that Loehmann had been deemed an emotionally unstable recruit and not fit for duty at his previous job as a police officer in the City of Independence, a suburb in Cleveland, Ohio.

The County Sheriff’s Office conducted a sharply criticized investigation and turned over the findings to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, Timothy McGinty, who then presented the results recommending that no charges should be brought to a Grand Jury which declined to indict the police officers. He was voted out of office last March 2016 in an election that largely revolved around the Tamir Rice shooting.

The settlement still requires approval from a probate court.