12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot dead by two police officers while playing with a toy gun in a playground last November - a tragedy that prompt a huge .
Despite having been told that the gun was “probably fake” and that the owner “probably a juvenile”by the caller who rang the station at the time, the two police officers sent to investigate were not informed of these details.
And when Tamir was instructed to raise his hands by the officers, the 12-year-old instead pulled up his shirt and displayed the toy gun, at which point, one of the attending police officers opened fire and the youngster was fatally hit in the stomach.
Tamir’s family subsequently sued the City of Cleveland for wrongful death, and today they were awarded $6m - $3 this year and $3 next year.
According to reports, the city did not acknowledge wrongdoing and Tim McGinty, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, said a "perfect storm of human error" led to the boy's death, adding the officers' actions did not amount to a crime.
At the time of his death, a lawyer representing Tamir’s heartbroken family has said: “The family is devastated. I would go as far as to say inconsolable. Tamir’s mother woke up yesterday with a son. Today, she woke up without a son.”
Tamir’s death, along with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, sparked a new civil rights movement that called for reforms to policing in the US.
