Only minutes before the verdict in Minneapolis of the Derek Chauvin trial was read, police in Columbus, Ohio, responded to an incident that led to the fatal shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old girl.
Police were responding to a call about someone armed with a knife. Body camera footage showed the officers arrived in the midst of a brawl between three girls. One of the girls involved in the fight can be seen wielding a knife as she lunges toward another girl, an officer yells, “Get down! Get down!” and then fires his weapon several times.
The teen was transported to a nearby hospital, Mount Carmel East, but died of her injuries. The department has contacted the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to review the officer’s use of deadly force, and the officer will be “taken off the street,” interim police chief Michael Woods told reporters at a press conference.
Franklin County Children’s Services confirmed on Tuesday night that the girl killed was 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant and that she was in foster care and in the custody of Children’s Services. The girl’s aunt also confirmed that Ma’Khia lived in a foster home and got into an altercation with someone else at the home, but told reporters that she had dropped the knife before being shot.
Protesters gathered with Black Lives Matter signs and megaphones a few blocks from the crime scene, and there was little celebration of the Chauvin verdict.
Police have killed 319 people in the U.S. so far in 2021, according to MappingPoliceViolence.org.
Source info at Columbus Dispatch, NBC, and Daily Beast.