Officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice gets new job

BELLAIRE — The former Cleveland police officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice has been hired by a police department in a small eastern Ohio village.

The Times-Leader reports that Bellaire’s police chief confirmed Friday he has hired Timothy Loehmann as a part-time officer.

Chief Richard Flanagan said Loehmann was never charged in Rice’s death and deserves a second chance.

Bellaire is a Belmont County village of about 4,000 along the Ohio River.

Rice, who was black, was outside a Cleveland recreation center in November 2014 when he was shot by Loehmann, who is white.

Published reports indicate he shot Rice less than 2 seconds after he arrived to investigate a complaint about a boy carrying what turned out to be a pellet gun.

A grand jury declined to indict Loehmann.

He was fired last year after it was discovered he had previously been deemed “unfit for duty.” Authorities say he had left off his Cleveland job application that he had worked for the Independence Police Department in Cuyahoga County and that he had been ordered there to quit or be fired.

Loehmann was one of two part-time officers hired by the Bellaire Police Department. The other is Eric Smith, Bethesda’s still-suspended police chief who remains under investigation by the Ohio Attorney General’s office for allegedly misusing a statewide computer system for law enforcement.