The Rice family is not OK.
Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir, stood on the steps of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center and stared ahead as her attorneys railed against the stalled investigation into her son’s death. The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office has steadfastly refused to comment. Tamir’s body remains unburied, awaiting any more medical needs in the investigation. As of this week, more than 160 days have passed since Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice at Cudell Rec Center.
Since then, Samaria and her daughter, Tajai, moved out of their westside home (“she could no longer live next door to the killing field of her son,” as court documents explain). The two shuffled around homeless shelters in the Cleveland area for months. What little money they had disappeared as quickly as it came. As only “a very recent development,” one of Samaria’s attorneys tells Scene, she has now found a new home for for the family, a small place of her own.
But the Rice family is not OK.
After their words etched pain across TV screens and Twitter on Monday, a surge of fundraising brought in thousands of dollars ($28,428 as of press time). It’s not the first fundraising effort for the family, but organizers, including Samaria’s own civil rights attorneys, hope it will be more effective than previous attempts.
Shortly after Tamir’s death, Daily Kos columnist Shaun King helped organize a youcaring.com crowdfunding campaign that brought in more than $60,000 in a day. Within just a few hours, King says, he and others were bombarded with messages warning people away from the fundraiser.
Soon, attorney Timothy Kucharski, at the time representing the family in their civil rights case, got in touch with the organizers and threatened to get the FBI involved and shut down the account, King says (note the call placed to FBI on Page 6 of the first document below). But the money had been collected.
“I’m thinking, ‘What planet am I living on? What world have I stepped into?’” King tells Scene. The money was immediately tied up in the court-controlled Charter One estate account. Samaria has been able to access it only in small withdrawals here and there. Much of the money has gone to pay Kucharski and fellow civil rights attorney David Malik — thousands of dollars in legal fees. Calls placed to the two attorneys this week were not returned as of Tuesday morning.
Kucharski and Malik initially filed the wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the Rice family (unbeknownst to Samaria, according to federal court documents, although that point has been contested heavily by both sides). Shortly, though, the family began working with attorneys Benjamin Crump and Walter Madison, who are reportedly working the case pro bono. Kucharski and Malik released themselves from the case and have since applied for thousands of dollars from the estate. The motions, filed by fiduciary Elizabeth Goodwin for “costs incurred and work performed” on a case that has yet to produce any tangible results, have been approved by Judge Anthony Russo.
“This money was meant to help the family with their needs,” King says. “They were so determined to collect the fees that they collected them from a lady who was homeless and struggling. There’s no way you look at it where that’s not ugly.” By now, according to probate court documents, the attorney fees have totaled $23,721.94.
In December, the sum of the estate of Tamir Rice was listed as $57,817.23. Every penny of that was money collected from the Internet fundraising effort earlier that month, according to Goodwin.
Right before attorney Walter Madison spoke with Scene yesterday, he spoke with Samaria Rice over the phone. He said that much of the time was spent listening to her “tears of joy” as this week’s fundraising attempt topped $20,000 and kept growing.
But the Rice family is not OK.
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Embedded below are three documents — the first being a Jan. 5 application for attorney fees detailing specific legal costs, the second being Judge Anthony Russo’s order approving the fees in March, and the third being a Dec. 19 report of the estate of Tamir Rice.
Jan. 5, 2015, Attorney Fees Filing — Estate of Tamir Rice
Judge Anthony Russo Order Approving Attorney Fees
Inventory of Estate of Tamir Rice
This article appears in Apr 29 – May 5, 2015.
It appears
It appears that “civil rights attorneys” can mean — greedy ambulance chasers with slick smiles civilly drain a mourning client out of cash for doing less than zero. It is sickening that buzzards initially circled the family in search of an ongoing payday, but at least they now have real and formidable legal representation.
At least these “civil rights attorneys” charge less than Sharpton and Jackson.
Nobody should be expected to understand all of the ways an attorney can legally rip you off if you’ve never used the services of an honest attorney before! It’s truly awful what these slimy “civil rights” attorneys did. I’m glad that honest lawyers have stepped in. Thankfully the three young ladies abducted by Ariel Castro weren’t victimized by the same slimy types!
Our society has become proficient in the blame game. However, let’s take a step back. Had Tamir been taught that you do not wave a gun, fake or real, at innocent people then this would have never happened in the first place. Had Tamir been taught that when the police tell you to put your hands up, you put your hands up, this would have never happened. However, rather than take responsibility for the way Tamir was raised it is easier to blame the police. When looking for someone to blame for the tragic death of her son, Samaria Rice simple needs to look in a mirror. You, my dear, failed your son.
I love how Mr. Blame game above me blames the kid and the mother and not the police who actually pulled the trigger. The police shot him with 2 seconds of showing up. Had the police offers been trained properly none of this would have happened also. Why aren’t they held accountable and not the 12 year old.? People like the above disgust me.
I really find it hard to believe there are subhumans like the ones commenting above who blame the grieving mother and her dead son.
You folks that absolve the mother and Tamir are ignorant. I’m terribly and emotionally sorry that Tamir is dead, but it’s is his mother’s fault. He was too young to be held accountable for his foolish actions yet surely he though they were innocent actions.
If his mother didn’t inform him that waving a gun of any kind in an urban high crime area was tantamount to playing on the highway, that’s no ones fault but the mothers. She may not like that, but too bad. She failed her son.
As for the attornies fees, they are EXTREMELY low. I think lawyers are overpriced but I believe the market sets the price. She dumped them only because someone came along and said they would work for free. That’s fine, but these new attornies aren’t working for free. They are being paid in publicity and will be paid if there is a civil suit and more so for future clients that due the city for which they are their representatives.
20K in cash is a LOT of money, especially for someone that has been living paycheck to paycheck. I don’t quite understand how the funds raised by King, even after attornies fees means this woman who apparently had nothing prior to her sons unfortunate but non-criminal shooting doesn’t make her relatively rich as it relates to her condition prior to her sons untimely death. Something doesn’t make sense.
I dont understand how ignorance above me attempts to blame a mother and a young child about gun sense when police officers, that are supposed to be trained extensively in guns, waved around their guns and killed a fucking child.