Tamir Rice, 12, was shot and killed in 2014 by a former Cleveland police officer, and the chief of police in West Virginia who hired him has resigned.
Chief of Police of White Sulphur Springs D.S. Teubert went back to work as a patrolman. Teubert had suggested that Timothy Loehmann be appointed as a probationary cop, according to Mayor Kathy Glover.
It was last week that Loehmann left the White Sulphur Springs police department. This was Loehmann’s third stint in six years leaving a tiny police agency in the wake of criticism soon after he was appointed.
During a Monday night town council meeting, Glover stated, “I did not know who he was, and I did not have all of the information that should have been given. It was something we were unaware of and not prepared for all the way around.”
Glover claimed that she expressed her regret to Rice’s family as well.
On November 22, 2014, Loehmann shot and killed Black man Rice while he was playing with a pellet pistol outside a leisure center in Cleveland. Loehmann and his companion arrived shortly after Rice did. The white policemen informed the investigators that Loehmann had yelled at Tamir to raise his hands three times.
Community demonstrations against Black people’s treatment by the police were triggered by the incident, particularly after a grand jury declined to bring charges against Loehmann or his colleague.
After Cleveland paid $6 million to settle a lawsuit over Tamir’s death, the city fired Loehmann for lying on his police officer application.
Later, in October 2018, Loehmann was hired on a part-time basis by a police department in the village of Bellaire, southeast Ohio, but he withdrew his application a few days later after receiving criticism from Tamir’s mother Samaria and other people.
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He was sworn in as the only police officer in July 2022 in Tioga, a rural, north-central Pennsylvania village of around 600 people, about 300 miles (480 kilometers) from Cleveland. However, due to criticism and media attention surrounding his hiring, he departed the community before working a single shift.
Julian R. Byer Jr., the deputy police chief of White Sulphur Springs, was sworn in as the next chief of police. On Wednesday, the White Sulphur Springs police department did not return a phone. Glover did not pick up the phone right away.
Governor Jim Justice, a Republican, owns the upscale Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, which is located in southeast West Virginia near the Virginia border.
