Russell and Williams Killing — 2012 Cleveland Police Shooting

The Case

The killing of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams is a 2012 US police-shooting case in which 13 Cleveland police officers fired 137 rounds into a car carrying two unarmed Black civilians at the end of a high-speed chase in East Cleveland, Ohio. Only one officer, Michael Brelo, was criminally charged for the shooting itself, and he was acquitted of voluntary manslaughter in 2015. The case became a national symbol of concerns about police use of force, supervisory failures, and racial disparities in American policing.

The Crime

On the evening of November 29, 2012, Timothy Russell drove past Cleveland police headquarters in downtown Cleveland with Malissa Williams in the passenger seat. According to the investigation summarized by the Ohio Attorney General, officers heard a loud sound — later determined to be a backfire from the car's exhaust — and mistakenly believed shots had been fired at them.

What followed was a 22-minute pursuit covering roughly 23 miles, eventually involving more than 100 officers and over 60 patrol vehicles. The chase ended in the parking lot of Heritage Middle School in East Cleveland, where Russell's 1979 Chevrolet Malibu was hemmed in by police cars. Thirteen officers then opened fire, discharging at least 137 rounds into the vehicle. Timothy Russell was struck 23 times and Malissa Williams 24 times. Both were killed at the scene. No firearm was ever recovered from the car or from either victim.

The Victims

Timothy Russell and Malissa A. Williams were both Black Cleveland residents who were homeless or marginally housed at the time of their deaths and reportedly struggled with mental illness and addiction. Russell, profiled in a biographical entry on BlackPast, had no violent criminal history that matched the threat officers perceived. Their case is preserved in detail through The Marshall Project's record on Timothy Russell, which collects coverage of the shooting and its legal aftermath.

Investigation

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), part of the Ohio Attorney General's office, led the inquiry because of the obvious conflict of interest in having the Cleveland Division of Police investigate its own officers. Investigators reconstructed the chase route, catalogued shell casings, and examined the vehicle, ultimately documenting that the car had been hit by more than 137 bullets.

A central finding was that Officer Michael Brelo had climbed onto the hood of Russell's car at the end of the encounter and fired at least 15 shots downward through the windshield after other officers had already stopped shooting. Prosecutors argued this final volley was the legally decisive use of force against two people who, by that point, posed no credible threat. In May 2014, a Cuyahoga County grand jury indicted Brelo on two counts of voluntary manslaughter; five police supervisors were separately charged with misdemeanor dereliction of duty for their roles in allowing the chase to spiral out of control.

Trial and Verdict

Brelo waived his right to a jury trial and was tried before Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John P. O'Donnell. On May 23, 2015, the judge issued a not-guilty verdict on both manslaughter counts and on lesser included charges of felonious assault. O'Donnell concluded that prosecutors had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Brelo's shots — as opposed to those of the 12 other officers — were the cause of death, and that Brelo's belief he faced a deadly threat was not unreasonable under the circumstances.

The verdict triggered protests in Cleveland and sharp criticism from civil rights groups. In an open letter on the aftermath of the Brelo verdict, the ACLU of Ohio argued that the outcome exposed systemic failures in accountability for police violence and called for deeper structural reform of the Cleveland Division of Police. The supervisor cases largely ended without convictions, and Brelo was later fired by the city along with several other officers involved in the shooting.

Today

The Russell and Williams case remains a touchstone in debates over US policing, alongside other Cleveland cases such as the 2014 killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. It contributed to a US Department of Justice investigation of the Cleveland Division of Police and to a subsequent federal consent decree requiring reforms in use-of-force policy, training, and supervision. Video reconstructions and news segments — including archival coverage available on YouTube — continue to be used by journalists, lawyers, and educators examining how a mistaken belief about a backfiring exhaust escalated into one of the most heavily documented police shootings in modern Ohio history.