A West Virginia police chief who hired a former Cleveland officer, known for fatally shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, has resigned.
White Sulphur Springs Police Chief D.S. Teubert has stepped down and returned to his former role as a patrolman, according to WVVA-TV. Mayor Kathy Glover stated that Teubert had recommended the hiring of Timothy Loehmann as a probationary officer.
Loehmann resigned from the White Sulphur Springs police force last week, marking the third time in six years that he left a police department amid backlash shortly after being hired.
“I did not know who he was, and I did not have all the information that should have been provided,” Glover said at a town council meeting on Monday night. “We were unaware and unprepared.”
Glover also apologized to the Rice family.
Tamir Rice, a Black child, was playing with a pellet gun outside a Cleveland recreation center on November 22, 2014, when Loehmann shot and killed him within seconds of arriving. Loehmann and his partner, both white, told investigators that Loehmann had shouted three times for Tamir to raise his hands.
The shooting led to community protests over police treatment of Black people, especially after a grand jury decided not to indict Loehmann or his partner.
Cleveland settled a lawsuit over Tamir’s death for $6 million and ultimately fired Loehmann for lying on his application to become a police officer.
Loehmann later secured a part-time position with a police department in Bellaire, Ohio, in October 2018 but withdrew his application days later after criticism from Tamir’s mother, Samaria, and others.
In July 2022, he was sworn in as the lone police officer in Tioga, Pennsylvania, a small community about 300 miles from Cleveland, but left without working a single shift amid backlash and media coverage over his hiring.
Deputy Police Chief Julian R. Byer Jr. has been sworn in as the new police chief of White Sulphur Springs. Calls to the police department went unanswered on Wednesday, and Glover did not immediately return a telephone message.
White Sulphur Springs is known for the luxurious Greenbrier resort, owned by Republican Governor Jim Justice, located in southeastern West Virginia near the Virginia border.