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Tamir Rice

Tamir Rice (JORDAN GONZALEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

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Incredibly, the City of Cleveland responded on Friday to a lawsuit filed by the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by saying he was responsible for his own demise. The boy was shot dead by cops while he held a pellet gun.

Reports Cleveland.com:

The city, in its response, wrote that Tamir’s death on Nov. 22 and all of the injuries his family claims in the suit “were directly and proximately caused by their own acts, not this Defendant.” It also says that the 12-year-old’s shooting death was caused “by the failure … to exercise due care to avoid injury.”

The response does not explain these defenses in more detail, though 20 defenses are listed in all, including another one that says Tamir died because of “the conduct of individuals or entities other than Defendant.”

The city also wrote that it does not have enough information to respond in full because the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office’s investigation into Rice’s death by police officer Timothy Loehmann is not finished.

The family had filed an amended lawsuit against the city late in January. As NBC News reported:

The Rice family’s lawyers had filed their case initially in federal court last December, a brief eight-page document. On Friday, with a new legal team including Benjamin Crump, the lawyer who has represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, the Rice family filed a 65-page document charging at least 27 different allegations.

Their claims ranging from excessive force by the two officers who encountered Rice, Frank Garmback and Timothy Loehmann, to negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, and deliberate indifference to a serious medical need.

Some of the charges stem from the way family members were treated by police as the boy lay dying. As described in a NewsOne interview with Tamir’s mother Samaria Rice:

When Rice arrived on the scene of the fatal shooting, she saw her 16-year-old son being held up against a police car surrounded by Cleveland police officers. Meanwhile, her 14-year-old daughter was being detained handcuffs in the back of the police car that Officer Loehmann had gotten out of prior to the shooting.

Rice said as she tried to get to her son, the Cleveland police officers on the scene told her to calm down or they would put her in the police car, as well. “Police gave me an ultimatum” to either stay with her daughter or ride to the hospital with her son Tamir, she explained. “So of course I went with the 12-year-old.” Instead of riding next to her dying son, “They made me sit in front of the ambulance like I was a passenger,” she said.

Tamir died of his wounds the next day and the coroner has since ruled the death a homicide.

RELATED STORIES: 

Samaria Rice Recounts Heartbreaking Decision After Son Tamir Was Shot By Cop [VIDEO]

UPDATED: Cleveland Cops Release Video In Shooting Death Of 12-Year-Old [VIDEO]

Tamir Rice’s Parents File Amended Federal Wrongful Death Lawsuit