Interview with Tamir Rice's mother

[bronxgirl]

I can only imagine what pain she must be going through.

www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/tamir-rice-mother-interview-213252

Samaria Rice long ago lost count of how many times she has watched the surveillance video that captured the last few minutes when her 12-year-old son was still very much alive.

While reviewing the tape, she studies Tamir, tracking his every movement, looking for clues. She can now experience a range of emotions as she watches the video, rather than just the crushing grief of the early days. She smiles, even laughs, as she describes the playfulness of a boy who knows he’s getting away with something his mother never would have allowed.

“He’s playing with it,” she says, referring to a friend’s pellet gun in his hand. “He’s a happy boy. He knows if I’d seen that gun he would have been in the house for the rest of the day. He knows I ban those.”

She seems unaware that she is talking about her son in the present tense. This happens repeatedly during our two-hour interview on Wednesday.

Tamir is a loving kid and a mama’s boy.

Tamir, that’s how he is, making friends with everyone.

Tamir, he’s the glue that keeps kids together.

In about five weeks, Rice and those who are still paying attention in the Cleveland community will mark the one-year anniversary of that cold day in November when a police car swooped into Cudell Park, stopping a few feet away from Tamir Rice. Two seconds later, the child dropped to the ground, mortally wounded from bullets fired by Officer Timothy Loehmann, whom we now know was released for incompetence from a previous police job on a suburban force. Tamir lay bleeding alone on the ground for nearly four minutes before an FBI agent with paramedic training rushed to him and administered first aid until the ambulance arrived.

Almost a year later, Samaria Rice is still waiting to find out if a grand jury will indict either of the two police officers involved in her son’s death. She is losing hope after last week, when Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty released two reports by legal experts declaring that the police shooting was “objectively reasonable.”

Rice’s lawyers insist the reports have “tainted the grand jury process” that will consider criminal charges against the officers.

“It’s clear to the Rice family that these so-called experts were selected to present a point of view to defend the officer’s conduct,” Rice’s lawyer Subodh Chandra says. The timing of the reports’ release was “an unprecedented thing for a prosecutor to do on behalf of someone potentially facing a murder charge.”

Prosecutor McGinty is in Brooklyn this week for a seminar. His spokesman Joe Frolik said he was unavailable to comment. Frolik insisted that the investigation is far from over and that the prosecutor’s office is awaiting additional reports. He would not say whether McGinty will advocate for charges against one or both officers. Even if McGinty does, it seems increasingly unlikely the grand jury will deliver a decision before the new year.

Rice’s lawyers and community activists continue to express outrage over the delay. Samaria Rice appears to have lost faith that anyone will be held accountable for her son’s death.

“There’s no way,” she says, shaking her head. “There’s no way they plan to indict. There’s nothing to investigate. Tamir was 12 ... For a while, I thought Tim McGinty was going to fight for my boy, for justice for him.” She shakes her head again. “I don’t believe that anymore.”

It has been a long, hard year for 38-year-old Samaria Rice, but she is candid about the many rough years that preceded it.

“My uncle is the only one there for me,” she says, referring to Michael Petty, who spoke at Tamir’s funeral and participated in negotiations this week for this interview. “This family has always had parts of it that were destroyed. This has destroyed it even more.”

Her earliest years are full of memories of drugs, guns and domestic violence. Her parents divorced when she was 7 or 8. By age 9, she was already a surrogate mother to her younger siblings, wearing a house key around her neck as she shepherded them onto city buses. At 13, her mother was in prison for manslaughter and her father was gone.

“I went from foster home to foster home. That’s where I learned to trust a lot of people of different nationalities. I didn’t have anybody in my family helping me. I had to learn to trust somebody,” she recalls. “A lot of white people, a lot of people who weren’t black, were helping me.”

She went from foster care to depending on friends. “From couch to couch, from one boyfriend to another,” she says. “Living in fear was a way of life.” She attended high school for only a few months before dropping out. “I still went to church,” she says, “whenever I could.”

When her mother would call from prison, she’d hang up on Samaria if her daughter started to cry. “That used to hurt me,” she says, “but I understand it now, I do, I understand it. She couldn’t handle it.”

In early 2011, her mother had a series of strokes and was diagnosed with lung cancer. Samaria cared for her until the day she died.

She winces when I suggest that not every daughter in her circumstances would have been willing to care for a mother whom she felt had abandoned her.


Read more: www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/tamir-rice-mother-interview-213252#ixzz3okqsbC5K

[elleblue]

This is soul crushing. Reading this makes my chest constrict so I can only imagine what she feels.  </3

[NewOrleans]

[bronxgirl]

For some reason this didn't show up in the cut and paste, but when I saw this on FB the headline was "It's the last video I have of my child alive." That hit me like a ton of bricks.

[sunny]

Oct 16, 2015 13:02:30 GMT -5 bronxgirl said:

For some reason this didn't show up in the cut and paste, but when I saw this on FB the headline was "It's the last video I have of my child alive." That hit me like a ton of bricks.

god that makes me cry

[mrsukyankee]

That is horrific. I can't even imagine.

[sfy]

Oct 16, 2015 12:57:43 GMT -5 elleblue said:

This is soul crushing. Reading this makes my chest constrict so I can only imagine what she feels.  </3

This and my throat getting lumpy is exactly what happened to me.

Every time I read about these parents, I think about the picture I saw of her, Trayvon Martin's mother, Michael Brown's mother and Eric Garner's mother.  What an absolutely horrible club to be a member of, I can't even imagine.

[PatBenatar]

That poor woman. My heart is broken for her

[omgzombies]

It hurts to read, and it's infuriating.

[secretlyevil]

That poor, poor woman.

[YeahSure]

[Deleted]

This is heartbreaking.

[jojoandleo]

I cannot imagine how helpless she feels. This breaks my heart.

[orriskitten]

This is heartbreaking. What a vicious cycle of violence and what a tragic ending for this family. I can't even comprehend the pain this must cause his mom, and to be hopeless on top of it. The system that is okay with letting these officers walk is beyond words.

[WOT?*]

Oct 16, 2015 13:02:30 GMT -5 bronxgirl said:

For some reason this didn't show up in the cut and paste, but when I saw this on FB the headline was "It's the last video I have of my child alive." That hit me like a ton of bricks.

</3

[twotrue]

The layers and depths of pain this woman has experienced is more than anyone should have to.

[summer]

This makes me angry again. This mother better get justice

[LadySusan]

This poor mother. Nobody should have to bury their children.

[MrsAxilla]

</3