A teenage girl who the police say threatened two girls with
a knife was fatally shot by an officer in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday afternoon,
shortly before a jury reached a guilty verdict in the murder trial of former
Minneapolis police officer
Derek Chauvin in last year’s killing of
George Floyd.
اضافة اعلان
The girl’s death cast an immediate pall over public
expressions that justice had been served in Floyd’s case and touched off
protests in Ohio’s capital city.
At a news conference Tuesday night, the Columbus Division of
Police released body camera footage from the officer, who officials said had
been responding to a 911 call about an attempted stabbing around 4:45pm in the
southeastern part of the city.
Officials said the video showed the teenager lunging at two
other females with a knife as the officer arrived at the driveway of a
residence. The officer then fired several times — four shots could be heard in
the video — at the girl. She collapsed to the ground next to a car that had
been parked in the driveway, where the body camera footage showed a knife on
the ground.
The girl who was killed was identified as Ma’Khia Bryant,
16, by a spokeswoman for Franklin County Children’s Services, who said in an
email Tuesday night that Ma’Khia had been in foster care.
“No matter what the circumstances, that family is in agony
and they are in my prayers,” Ned Pettus, the public safety director for the
city of Columbus, said during the news conference.
“They deserve answers. Our
city deserves answers. I want answers, but fast, quick answers cannot come at
the cost of accurate answers.”
The name of the officer, who officials said had been taken
off the street while the shooting was investigated, was not released. The Ohio
Bureau of Criminal Investigation will conduct an independent inquiry, which
local officials said is standard whenever an officer shoots someone.
Earlier Tuesday night on Twitter, Mayor Andrew Ginther of
Columbus urged residents to keep the peace as protesters descended on the
scene.
“This afternoon a young woman tragically lost her life,”
Ginther said. “We do not know all of the details. There is body-worn camera
footage of the incident. We are working to review it as soon as possible.”
A woman interviewed by The Columbus Dispatch identified the
victim, who was Black, as her teenage niece. The woman, Hazel Bryant, told the
newspaper that her niece lived in a foster home and got into an altercation
with someone else at the home.
A crowd of protesters gathered outside the city’s police
building, local news media reported.
The teenager’s death quickly received widespread attention,
including from Ben Crump, the Floyd family’s lawyer, amid a continuing
reckoning over police accountability and systemic racism.
“As we breathed a collective sigh of relief today, a
community in Columbus felt the sting of another police shooting” Crump said.
“Another child lost! Another hashtag.”
Columbus has been gripped by tension over police shootings
since early December, when Casey Goodson Jr., 23, was shot to death at the
entrance of his home by a Franklin County sheriff’s deputy assigned to a
fugitive task force.
Members of the task force had been in the area looking for
someone in an operation that had nothing to do with Goodson.
Two weeks later, Andre Hill, 47, was shot four times by a
Columbus police officer who was responding to a call about a suspicious
vehicle. When officers arrived to investigate, they encountered Hill, and one
of the officers, Adam Coy, a 19-year veteran, opened fire within seconds. Coy,
who was fired after the shooting, was charged with felony murder in the case.
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