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 The mother of a 12-year-old boy fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer who mistook his BB gun for a real weapon said Monday that her son "didn't even have a chance" and would have cooperated if the authorities had asked him. 
 
 Tamir Rice was shot just moments after police arrived at the park near his house after a 911 caller informed authorities that the boy had a gun but cautioned it could be a fake. That information wasn't transmitted to responding police, who said they yelled at Rice to put his "hands up" when they encountered him. 
 
 "If they had said something he would have cooperated with them," his mother, Samaria Rice, told NBC News. "By them scaring him like that, he didn't even have a chance. They didn't even give him a chance to cooperate." 
 
 Rice said Tamir had just left home with his older sister, 14, to go play when the shooting occurred. Tamir had been playing with a friend's BB gun, which didn't bear the standard orange-colored mark identifying it as a toy. 
 
 Watching surveillance video of the incident unfold, Rice said: "It took my breath away. My heart almost stopped because I just couldn't believe what I was looking at. They basically scared him." 
 
 Samaria Rice, who has three other children, said she was in shock following the shooting and was angry "because Cleveland police have failed to come knock on my door and tell me what happened to my son. Nobody ever showed up, ever." 
 
 When she arrived at the park, Rice said she first "noticed the police were just standing around and they weren't doing anything." Then, she realized her daughter was in the back of a police car. "She told me that the police tackled her and put her in handcuffs," Rice said. 
 
 The Cleveland police department didn't respond to messages seeking comment on Rice's allegations. 
 
 Tamir died in the hospital the next day. His mother described him as a helper and talented athlete who "always had a smile. Nothing could ever break his smile." She said justice would mean convictions for both officers who responded to the call and that police needed to be trained how to properly respond to such situations. 
 
 The family has filed a civil suit against Officers Loehmann, Garmback and the city of Cleveland. One of their lawyers, Benjamin Crump, appealed for the officer who shot Tamir, Timothy Loehmann, to be charged without a grand jury trial. 
 
 Crump said surveillance video showing Loehmann and Frank Garmback arriving at the park and shooting Tamir is "enough probable cause to indict the police officer now." 
 
 Cleveland Deputy Chief Ed Tomba said in November that a grand jury would hear the case because the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office, which is overseeing the case, has a policy of presenting all fatal police shootings to a grand jury. 
 
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 Lawyer Benjamin Crump says Grand Jury should be bypassed in Tamir Rice's shooting #wkyc pic.twitter.com/XS7rM8Trs3 — Tom Beres (@TomBeres) December 8, 2014 
 
 — Elisha Fieldstadt and Miranda Leitsinger ||||| The mother of a 12-year-old boy shot dead last month by Cleveland police after he was seen holding a toy gun said today the most agonizing moment was when she had to decide whether to go with her injured son to the hospital or stay at the recreation center playground to figure out why her daughter was in the back seat of a police car. 
 
 "I asked the police to let my daughter go and they wouldn't at that time and I asked them, 'What's going on?' But they wasn't telling me anything, just saying, 'Calm down, calm down," Samaria Rice said a news conference today, adding that her daughter told her later that police had tackled her before handcuffing her and placing in the back of the their vehicle near Tamir Rice’s body. 
 
 "I knew she was crying for me but I couldn’t see her hands," Rice said of her 14-year-old daughter, who was inside the rec center at the time of the shooting. 
 
 The question for her: “Whether I stay with the 14 year old or do I go with the 12 year old? Of course, I go with the 12-year-old,” she said. 
 
 The Cleveland Police Department has not responded to ABC News’ requests from comment. 
 
 Rice also said a child from the playground where her son was shot ran to her home to tell her a police officer had fired at her son Tamir. 
 
 "I really thought they was playing, like joking around, and I saw the seriousness in their face," she said of how she realized the boys who broke the news were not kidding. 
 
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 She said she ran to the scene of the shooting at a recreation center less than 100 yards from her home. 
 
 "I went charging and yelling and everything at the police because they wouldn't let me through," she said. 
 
 "They made me sit in the front of the ambulance truck like I was a passenger," she said. 
 
 Tamir's father, Leonard Warner, was at her side during the news conference this morning but chose not to make a statement. 
 
 One of the family's biggest complaints has been that police officers stood nearby and did not administer aide to Tamir for several minutes after the shooting. 
 
 The news conference came after Rice first spoke with ABC News earlier this morning and reiterated her wish to see both officers convicted, though only one of them firing the fatal shots. 
 
 Attorney Benjamin Crump, who has previously worked with the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, said that there should be no need for a grand jury in this case. 
 
 The process of having evidence evaluated by a secret grand jury has come under fire recently after two situations involving police altercations-- one in Ferguson, Missouri and another in Staten Island, New York-- both resulted in no indictments for any of the police officers involved. 
 
 "There is nothing written anywhere in the law that police officers are going to be treated any different than any other," Crump said today. 
 
 "When there is probable cause, you don't have to have a grand jury. You can do what the Constitution says and charge the people," he said.
– The mother of a 12-year-old boy shot dead while brandishing a toy gun wants authorities to skip the grand jury. At a press conference in Cleveland, the attorney for Samaria Rice urged prosecutors to avoid a grand jury trial and directly charge the officer who shot Rice's son Tamir in a park last month, NBC News reports. "There is nothing written anywhere in the law that says police officers are to be treated differently than any other citizen," says Benjamin Crump, who has also worked on the Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin cases. Crump's plea comes after nationwide protests derided grand juries that declined to charge white police officers who had killed Brown and Eric Garner, both of whom were black and unarmed. Rice says her tragedy began when two boys knocked on her door Nov. 22 saying an officer had shot Tamir twice in the stomach, ABC News reports. She ran to the park where Tamir lay on the ground, unattended by police, and saw her 14-year-old daughter in the back of a squad car (the daughter later said police had tackled and handcuffed her, Samaria adds). "I knew she was crying for me, but I couldn’t see her hands," says Samaria. She asked police what had happened but was only told to "calm down." Forced to choose between being with her older daughter and younger son, Samaria "of course ... [went] with the 12-year-old." Officers made her "sit in the front of the ambulance truck like I was a passenger" on the ride to the hospital, she says, where Tamir died the next day.