Friends, family and activists gather to protest about the police shooting of 21-year-old Ta'Kiya Young in Columbus, Ohio. Photo / AP
Ohio authorities have released bodycam video showing a police officer fatally shooting a young black mother in her car in what her family denounced as a “gross misuse of power and authority”.
Ta’Kiya Young, 21, who was pregnant with her third child, was shot on August 24 outside a grocery store in Blendon Township, a suburb of Columbus. Two police officers were trying to question her about alleged shoplifting.
Sean Walton, a lawyer representing her family, said the video clearly showed the shooting was unjustified and he called for the officer to be sacked and charged immediately. He criticised police for not releasing the video footage for more than a week after the shooting.
“Ta’Kiya’s family is heartbroken,” Walton told the Associated Press. “The video did nothing but confirm their fears that Ta’Kiya was murdered unjustifiably ... and it was just heartbreaking for them to see Ta’Kiya having her life taken away under such ridiculous circumstances.”
Young’s death follows a troubling series of fatal shootings of black adults and children by Ohio police and numerous occurrences of police brutality against black people across the nation in recent years. The events have prompted widespread protests and demands for police reform.
The officer who shot Young after she refused to get out of her car is on paid administrative leave while the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation examines the shooting, which is standard practice.
A police union official said calls to charge the officer before an investigation was complete were premature. The second officer at the scene has returned to active duty. Their names, races and ranks have not been released.
Blendon Township police chief John Belford called the shooting a tragedy.
“Ms Young’s family is understandably very upset and grieving,” he said in a written statement. “While none of us can fully understand the depths of their pain, all of us can remember them in our prayers and give them the time and space to deal with this heartbreaking turn of events.”
Young’s father, grandmother and other relatives watched the video before its public release and released a statement through Walton.
“It is undeniable that Ta’Kiya’s death was not only avoidable but also a gross misuse of power and authority,” the statement said.
While viewing the video, the family felt “a lot of anger, a lot of frustration”, Walton said. “More than anything, there was ... a sense of just devastation, to know that this power system, these police officers, could stop her and so quickly take her life for no justifiable reason.”
The video shows an officer at the driver’s side window telling Young she has been accused of theft and repeatedly demanding that she get out of the car. A second officer is standing in front of the car.
Young protests and the first officer repeats his demand. Then both officers yell at her to get out. At that point, Young can be heard asking them, “Are you going to shoot me?”, seconds before she turns the steering wheel to the right and the car moves toward the officer standing in front of it.
The officer fires his gun through the windshield and Young’s sedan drifts into the grocery store’s brick wall.
Officers then break the driver’s side window, which Belford said was to get Young out of the car and give medical aid, though footage of medical assistance was not provided.
Walton denied Young had stolen anything from the grocery store. He said his firm found a witness who saw her put down bottles of alcohol as she left the store.
“The bottles were left in the store,” he said. “So when she’s in her car denying that, that’s accurate. She did not commit any theft, and so these officers were not even within their right to place her under arrest, let alone take her life.”
Brian Steel, executive vice-president of the union representing Blendon Township police, criticised Walton’s characterisation of the shooting as murder before all the facts were in. He said an investigation would determine whether the shooting was justified.
“The fact is, [the officer] had to make a split-second decision while in front of a moving vehicle, a 2000-pound weapon,” he said.
But Edward Obayashi, a national use-of-force expert and lawyer specialising in vehicle-related police shootings, said that, while the officer who shot Young may have reasonably feared for his safety, it went against all his training to be in front of her car in the first place.
“The best practice in these matters nationwide is that you do not put yourself in a position of danger,” he said, especially given that Young was accused of such a minor crime.
“The results are predictable … Based on your training, why are you going to put yourself in front of a vehicle, in front of an individual that does not want to co-operate? There was no urgent need for him to position himself the way he did.”
The police department’s use of force policy states that officers should try to move away from an approaching vehicle instead of firing their weapons. An officer should only shoot when he or she “reasonably believes there are no other reasonable means available to avert the imminent threat of the vehicle, or if deadly force other than the vehicle is directed at the officer or others”.
Responding to criticism of the delay in releasing the video, Belford said it took time for his small staff to process it and properly redact certain footage, such as officers’ faces and badge numbers, in accordance with Ohio law.
He said the officers could not be named because they were being treated as assault victims. He said one of the officer’s arms was still partially in the driver’s side window and the other was still standing in front of the car when Young moved forward.
Among the most prominent of numerous black deaths at the hands of police in recent years was George Floyd on May 25, 2020. He died after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, pressed a knee on his neck for 9½ minutes outside a convenience store where Floyd tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder.
In Ohio, Donovan Lewis was lying on his bed in August 2022 when he was shot by an officer serving a warrant. Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old girl in foster care who was accused of swinging at two people with a knife, was fatally shot in April 2021. In December 2020, Casey Goodson Jr was shot five times in the back by a Franklin County sheriff’s deputy.
Ohio Families Unite for Political Action and Change, a grassroots organisation focused on eradicating police brutality, said the footage of Young’s shooting showed officers’ conduct was “violent, defenceless and egregious” and that they had acted as “judge, jury and executioner”.
Young was expected to give birth to a daughter in November. Family and friends held a private vigil a day after her death, releasing balloons and lighting candles spelling out “RIP Kiya”. An online effort to pay her funeral expenses has raised more than $7000.
Her siblings, cousins, grandmother and father have rallied around her sons, Ja’Kobie, 6, and Ja’Kenlie, 3, who did not yet understand the magnitude of what had happened to their mother, Walton said.
“It’s a large family and Ta’Kiya has been snatched away from them. I think the entire family is still in shock.”
Young’s grandmother, Nadine Young, described her as a family-oriented prankster who was a loving older sister and mother.
“She was so excited to have this little girl. She has her two little boys, but she was so fired up to have this girl. She is going to be so missed.
“I’m a mess because it’s just tragic, but it should have never, ever, ever happened.”