Ma’Khia Bryant.Photo: Paula Bryant
In the video, Ma’Khia is seen holding a knife and shoving a female who falls backward on the ground toward the officer. Ma’Khia then appears to threaten the female on the ground with the knife.
As she does so, the officer produces and points a gun, as Ma’Khia appears to turn toward a second female she has pinned against a car, lunging again with the knife at the second female and prompting the officer to pull the trigger. Ma’Khia was shot four times.
Protesters took to the streets of Columbus after the police shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant.Stephen Zenner/Getty
Officer Nick Reardon, who allegedly fired the shots, can be overheard on the video saying: “She had a knife. She just went at her.”
“At a news conference, Columbus interim Chief of Police Michael Woods said: “What the video shows is the female with a knife attempting to stab the first female that lands on the ground.”
A Columbus police officer since December 2019, Reardon has been placed on paid leave while the shooting is investigated.
“Bottom line: Did Ma’Khia Bryant need to die yesterday?” he said. “How did we get here? This is a failure on the part of our community. Some are guilty but all of us are responsible.”
Stephen Zenner/Getty
Ma’Khia’s family is speaking out about the case, arguing that the police officer’s decision to shoot her constituted a “disproportionate and unjustified use of force.”
“She was just a teenage girl, and this was an unnecessary loss of life,” said Don Bryant, a cousin of Ma’Khia’s mother Paula Bryant, reports NBC’s Today. “It’s a tragedy.”
Paula Bryant and her daughter, who was in the foster care system at the time of her death Tuesday, “loved each other, and Paula was working very hard to get her daughter back,” said Bryant.
The killing — on the same day as a verdict in Minneapolis declared white former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, in a widely watched trial — kept a spotlight focused on criticism of police use of force, especially as it concerns Black people.
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Among the victims, according to theTimes: Miles Jackson, a Black man with a weapon who was shot during a struggle as police attempted his arrest at a Columbus hospital;Andre Hill, an unarmed Black man, shot outside his garage as he walked toward officers who were called to the scene of a reported suspicious vehicle; andCasey Goodson Jr., a Black man with a concealed weapon license who was shot in the back outside his home after officers said he waved a gun at them from his car and then failed to respond to their verbal commands at his front door.
In the case of Ma’Khia’s death, “My first impression is that the officer was legally justified in using deadly force,” Philip Stinson, a Bowling Green State University professor who tracks fatal shootings where officers have faced criminal charges, told theColumbus Dispatch.
“It’s a terribly tragic situation, and my heart goes out to the girl and her family and friends,” he said. “But from looking at the video, it appears to me that a reasonable police officer would have had a reasonable apprehension of an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death being imposed against an officer or someone else. That’s the legal standard.”
He added: “I don’t know what the officer could have done differently. Based on what I saw, there was no opportunity for the officer to de-escalate.”
James Scanlon, a retired Columbus Division of Police SWAT officer who has testified as an expert in police use-of-force cases, told theDispatchthe officer wasn’t trying to protect himself, “but to save the life of someone he doesn’t even know. … It’s a shame that no one has recognized that that officer, in all likelihood, saved one or more lives.”
The incident unfolded after Ma’Khia allegedly argued with two other young women over messy housekeeping in their home, according to the woman who cared for Ma’Khia in foster care, reportsCNN.
“The older one told them to clean up the house because ‘Mom doesn’t like the house dirty,'” the woman, Angela Moore, said she wastold afterward. “So that’s how it all started.”
Bryant, the Ma’Khia family cousin, said the situation was “chaotic. Nobody deserves that,” he toldToday. “Who could expect something like this to happen in their family?”
“She was very funny,” Paula Bryant said of her daughter. “She had a beautiful personality. She was so sweet. So sweet.”
She added: “All I’m going to say is that she was defending herself. And she was a young girl. She was 16. She should not have had to do that.”
source: people.com
