CLEVELAND, Ohio — The FBI agent who rendered first aid to Tamir Rice minutes after a Cleveland police officer shot the 12-year-old boy later told investigators that the officers on scene "wanted to do something, but they didn't know what to do."
The agent, who is trained as a paramedic, said he took charge of assisting the boy, whose intestines were exposed through a wound to the torso, while one officer sat in a car holding his ankle.
"And, uh, you could see the level of concern in just these guys," the agent said, referring to the officers. "I don't think they knew what to do."
The agent's account is contained in 224 pages of investigative materials compiled by Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department. The report was made public Saturday by the county Prosecutor's Office.
The interview transcripts, test results and memos detail the Sheriff's Department's criminal investigation into Tamir's shooting death by officer Timothy Loehmann at Cudell Recreation Center on Nov. 22, but offer no determination as to whether the shooting was justified.
The agent, whose name prosecutors redacted from the reports, gave his account on Feb. 27 to detective James Mackey, with other detectives and the FBI's lawyers present at the FBI's Cleveland office. In a transcript, the agent described the scene as alternately chaotic, dangerous and eerily quiet.
(To read the transcript and a detective's report, scroll to the bottom of the story. The full investigative report can be read here.)
He walked the detective through his actions as he reviewed surveillance footage captured on the recreation center's cameras. Throughout it all, though, the agent, who served in the Marines and Air Force and worked as a police officer before joining the FBI in 2012, maintained that he felt he was the only one who could properly handle the scene, even if it wasn't his to handle.
He said he was the one who had to explain to Tajai Rice, Tamir's sister, what was being done to treat her wounded brother. And he said he felt he had to continue to treat Tamir, even when two firefighters arrived, because he had more emergency medical training and because "it'd be unethical for me to walk away with a lower level care."
The agent also said that when he attended to Tamir, the boy responded to his voice and "he turned over and acknowledged and looked at me, and he like reached for my hand."
But Tamir's wound required more than first aid, the agent said, and the boy's condition worsened.
"The reality is an injury like that, he needs bright lights and cold surgical steel," he said. "He needs surgery ... to repair that."
FBI spokeswoman Vicki Anderson declined to comment Saturday on the agent's interview with detectives. She also refused to make the agent available for an interview with the Northeast Ohio Media Group.
City spokesman Dan Williams also declined to comment.
Arriving at the scene
In the interview, the agent said he and Cleveland police Detective Daniel Lentz were investigating a bank robbery that happened the previous day. He said they were ready to head back to the department's First District station on West 130th Street when they heard of a shooting over their radio.
"Dan and I were driving; we realized that we were in the vicinity," the agent said. "We kind of looked at each other. He made uh, u-turn around, and we started heading towards the rec center ..."
At the scene, the agent approached the officers and asked whether any of the officers had first aid equipment or medical gear.
"Anybody that has any of that, bring it over here, and they didn't have anything," the agent recalled saying. "I said 'OK; well, rubber gloves' ... a guy threw me a set of gloves."
Tending to Tamir
The agent described Tamir's injuries as looking "incredibly disturbing." He said that he did not notice any bleeding, yet he "wasn't even sure if he was alive, 'cause he wasn't moving.
"He was just kind of laying there. I could see the evisceration, because his shirt was kind of pulled up and his coat was wide open," the agent said.
He told Tamir, who was lying on the concrete, that he was a paramedic, and was there to help him.
"So, he actually turned his head and looked at me and acknowledged," the agent continued. He said he asked the boy for his name and Tamir responded. He also said Tamir made a reference to his airsoft pellet gun, but "at that time it wasn't my main concern."
After assessing Tamir's injuries, the agent concluded that the only thing he could do was try to keep Tamir's airway open "and just try to keep him alive long enough to get him to the hospital." He said the boy's condition then worsened and that Tamir's wound started oozing and protruding. So he asked an officer to cover the wound with his hand.
Throughout the interview, the agent maintains that his focus was almost always on keeping Tamir alive until an ambulance arrives.
The scene worsens
There were a few distractions, though, that he wasn't able to completely ignore.
The agent said he was aware that Tamir's sister, Tajai, was handcuffed in the back of a squad car after she tried to run up to Tamir's side. He said other officers tried to calm her down and explained to her why she was detained.
"And I may have said — I think I did tell her, I said, you know, 'This is very serious — your brother. It's a serious injury, but he's on his way to the hospital. They're aware that he's coming. This is probably the best situation. He's goin' to be there, probably with a trauma surgeon, in under an hour.'"
He also said Tamir's brother came up and started to threaten Cleveland police officers while he was giving first aid.
"I remember looking up and I think I said to someone like, 'Hey, is somebody going to deal with this?'" the agent recalled. "I felt threatened. ... It wasn't a situation where I wanted to be uh, you know, uh, exposed."
He said Lentz eventually dealt with Tamir's brother.
As firefighters arrived, the agent continued to treat Tamir. Paramedics arrived three or four minutes later and helped load Tamir into an ambulance to take him to MetroHealth Medical Center. By that time Samaria Rice, Tamir's mother, had arrived and she got into the front of the ambulance.
"I think she was talking to someone or like on the phone. Just kind of like nonchalant," the agent recalled.
When asked if Samaria seemed concerned, he replied "I mean, people react differently."
"I mean, I — my wife, we'd probably have a different response if that was my child laying there ... so, I — I don't know her," he continued. "I don't know what her situation is. I thought maybe she'd be a little more concerned."
The agent said he was on scene for about 18 minutes. During that time, the agent said he saw Loehmann sitting in his squad car, looking like he was in pain from an ankle injury.
He told Loehmann that an ambulance was coming for him too, and the officer said he would be OK until one arrived. Loehmann said he was injured because he had fallen.
"And, uh, then he said, like he made this spontaneous utterance that like, 'He had a gun and he reached for it,'" the agent said.
"I think it was uh, a, very difficult situation for him to deal with, and, and, you know, probably now as the adrenaline is wearing off, I think the realization is kicking in that he just had to shoot somebody."
NEOMG reporter Cory Shaffer contributed to this report.
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