In his first public account of the shooting, Timothy Loehmann told grand jurors he thought he was facing an ‘active shooter situation’ 
 
 The officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Ohio has delivered his first public account of the killing, over a year after the incident occurred, arguing his actions were justified as he was engaged in an “active shooter situation” and believed Tamir was 18 years old. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said he released the statements "in keeping with our determination to be as transparent as possible in this and other police use of fatal deadly force cases." Garmback, who was driving the cruiser, said in his statement that he wanted to keep the boy away from the recreation center and that the patrol car slid when he hit the brakes. Loehmann said he and his partner thought Tamir was going to run as they drove up to him, but Tamir turned toward the cruiser. Loehmann said he told Tamir to raise his hands repeatedly as the boy was “reaching into his waistband” before the officer opened fire and had exited his patrol cruiser because he had been trained that “the cruiser is a coffin”. He continued: “With his hands pulling the gun out and his elbow coming up, I knew it was a gun and it was coming out … the threat to my partner and myself was real and active.” 
 
 Lawyers for the Rice family have repeatedly dismissed claims that Loehmann and Garmback could have given the 12-year-old sufficient warnings or commands, given the fraction of time that passed between the officers arriving on the scene and opening fire. Chandra also noted that Loehmann said he issued at least three commands to "show me your hands," but that Garmback said he thought the cruiser's windows were rolled up as they drove toward Tamir. Neither officer gave a statement to internal investigators in the days after the shooting. A Cuyahoga County grand jury is currently considering whether to bring charges against Loehmann, 27, and his partner, 47-year-old Frank Garmback, both of whom are white. They wrote that surveillance video of the shooting appeared to show Tamir's hands moving toward his waistband as Loehmann got out of the car, which would have given the officer reason to believe Tamir was reaching for a gun.
– The two Cleveland police officers involved in the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice are telling their side of the story for the first time. In two statements, officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback say they were investigating a report of a "guy with a gun" in a park outside a recreation center on Nov. 22, 2014, when they saw Tamir pulling what they believed to be a real gun from his waistband, per Cleveland.com. Garmback, 47, says he drove over a curb and across a lawn because the park's main entrance blocked cars from entering. Loehmann, 27, says he yelled "show me your hands" three times, then opened fire on Tamir—who the officers believed was an adult, per the AP. "Even when he was reaching into his waistband, I didn't fire,'" Loehmann says, per NBC News. Then "I saw the weapon in his hands coming out of his waistband and the threat to my partner and myself was real and active." Loehmann's lawyer says his statement was given "against legal advice" since the officer is the target of a criminal investigation and evidence is now being presented to a Cuyahoga County grand jury. She adds, however, it was "in the interest of the investigators having the facts." The statements were read to grand jurors on Tuesday, per the Guardian. Lawyers for the Rice family accuse the local prosecutor of allowing the officers to give "unsworn statements" so as to avoid the "vigorous cross examination" that comes with testifying before the grand jury. "No regular target of a criminal investigation would be afforded this opportunity," they say. They add Loehmann "is suggesting that he observed things and took action that would have been physically impossible for any human being to do in the less than two seconds it took him to shoot this 12-year-old boy." (Read Loehmann's comments from the scene.)