AP Photo/Tony Deja
- Samaria Rice published a heartfelt Facebook post in remembrance of her son, Tamir, on the six-year anniversary of his death.
- Then-12-year-old Tamir was fatally shot in November 2014 as he was playing with a plastic toy gun in a park by Cleveland police officer, Timothy Loehmann.
- “As we honor Tamir Rice on his 6th death anniversary, I wanted to show how pain is turned into power: By loving my children and grandchildren unconditionally,” Samaria Rice wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
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Samaria Rice published a heartfelt Facebook post to mark the six-year anniversary of her son Tamir Rice’s death.
On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir was shot twice by a white police officer, Timothy Loehmann, while playing with a plastic pellet gun by a recreation center in Cleveland, Ohio. The child died hours later.
In honor of her late son, Samaria founded The Tamir Rice Foundation in 2016 to provide children with “after-school programs in arts and culture,” according to the foundation’s website.
“As we honor Tamir Rice on his 6th death anniversary, I wanted to show how pain is turned into power: By loving my children and grandchildren unconditionally,” Samaria wrote on Facebook on Sunday. She asked for $6 donations to the foundation “so we can continue to build our Afro-Centric Cultural Center to honor Tamir and support youth in Cleveland.”
The Afro-Centric Cultural Center is the foundation’s core initiative, serving as an “enriching space to keep children safe from unjust harm.”
Samaria also shared photos of a gazebo, where she said Tamir "was assassinated by law enforcement."
"This is my forever lasting memory of my son Tamir," she wrote. "Thanks to my great friend Theaster Gates and the Rebuild Foundation for always supporting us and understanding our needs unconditionally. "
Gates, an artist, obtained the gazebo and stored it at his Stony Island Arts Bank museum in Chicago, Illinois, according to The Grio.
"Caring for this gazebo felt like my duty as a Black man," Gates told The Guardian last year.
Samaria has spoken openly about her personal journey mourning her son's death and told USA Today in June that "it's an empty feeling of loss when you don't have your puzzle complete."
"People ask me all the time, 'How are you standing up?'" she told the outlet. "I'm telling them I do know that it's through the grace of God."
Tamir's death sparked nationwide outrage as widely shared video footage of the shooting showed Loehmann shot the child within seconds of arriving at the scene.
After a weekslong trial, a grand jury in December 2015 did not charge Loehmann and his partner Frank Garmback for their actions that resulted in his death. In 2016, Tamir's family was given a $6 million settlement from the city in a federal lawsuit. A year later, Loehmann was terminated from the Cleveland Police Department for reasons unrelated to the shooting.