February 11, 2016

Updated: Cleveland Asked Tamir Rice’s Family to Pay $500 for Their Child’s Last Ambulance Ride

Now city officials say it was all a mistake.

Tony Dejak/AP

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Update, Thursday, February 11, 2016: Cleveland officials said they are withdrawing the claim saying the Rice family owed $500 for their son’s last ambulance ride. At a news conference on Thursday, officials explained that the claim had been been closed in February 2015 after the city absorbed the cost, but that it was regenerated after the family’s attorney asked the city to forward a billing statement for services provided on the day of the shooting. Mayor Frank Jackson apologized to the Rice family, saying they never intended to issue a bill.

 

Cleveland officials are holding a news conference to address a claim filed Wednesday notifying the Tamir Rice estate that it owes the city money for the boy’s ambulance ride and medical services he received after he was shot by a police officer.

Posted by cleveland.com on Thursday, February 11, 2016

Less than two months after a grand jury decided not to indict the Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, the city has filed a claim saying the boy owed $500 “for emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense.” In response to the claim, a Rice family attorney told the Cleveland Scene that the move “displays a new pinnacle of callousness and insensitivity.”

The mayor’s office could not be reached immediately for comment.

Here is the full text of the claim:

 

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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