West Virginia police chief who hired police officer responsible for Tamir Rice resigns

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. – A West Virginia police chief who was responsible for hiring a former Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 has resigned.

White Sulphur Springs Police Chief DS Teubert returned to his previous job as a patrol officer, WVVA-TV reported. Mayor Kathy Glover said Teubert recommended hiring Timothy Loehmann as a probationary officer.

Loehmann resigned from the White Sulphur Springs police force last week. It was the third time in six years that Loehmann has left a small police department shortly after being hired after receiving strong backlash.

“I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t have all the information I should have had,” Glover said at a city council meeting Monday night. “It was something we didn’t know about and weren’t prepared for at all.”

Glover said she also apologized to Rice’s family.

Rice, who was black, was playing with a pellet gun outside a Cleveland recreation center on Nov. 22, 2014, when he was shot by Loehmann, seconds after Loehmann and his partner arrived. The white officers told investigators that Loehmann yelled at Tamir three times to put his hands up.

The shooting sparked public protests against police treatment of black people, especially after a grand jury decided not to bring charges against Loehmann or his partner.

Cleveland reached a $6 million settlement with the city over Tamir’s death and eventually fired Loehmann for lying on his application for a police officer job.

Loehmann later received a part-time job with the police in the southeastern Ohio village of Bellaire in October 2018, but withdrew his application a few days later after Tamir’s mother, Samaria, and others criticized the hiring.

In July 2022, he was sworn in as the only police officer in Tioga – a community of about 600 residents in rural northern Pennsylvania, about 300 miles from Cleveland – but left the community without working a single shift amid fierce backlash and media coverage of his hiring.

White Sulphur Springs Deputy Police Chief Julian R. Byer Jr. was sworn in as the new police chief. A call to White Sulphur Springs police went unanswered Wednesday. Glover did not immediately return a phone message.

White Sulphur Springs is home to the upscale Greenbrier Resort in southeastern West Virginia on the Virginia border, owned by Republican Governor Jim Justice.