An Ohio police officer has been charged with murder for the fatal shooting of Ta’Kiya Young, a pregnant Black mother accused of shoplifting at a Kroger supermarket last year, NBC reports.
Blendon Township police officer Connor Grubb was charged with four counts of murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter, and four counts of felonious assault for the deaths of Young and her unborn daughter, who was due in three months at the time of the shooting.
The shooting occurred on August 24, 2023, in a Kroger supermarket parking lot. Body cam footage shows Officer Connor Grubb and another officer approaching Young in her vehicle and ordering her to get out of the car. When Young asks why, the accompanying officer tells her that supermarket employees have accused her of shoplifting and that she can’t leave. Young remains in her vehicle while Grubb and the other officer repeatedly tell her to get out of her car. Eventually Grubb walks to the front of her vehicle and draws his weapon. He yells “Get out of the f—ing car” Young then says “No,” “Are you going to shoot me?”
At that point, the other officer bangs on the driver’s side window and reaches inside the vehicle. Young then turns her steering wheel and appears to inch the vehicle forward slowly, at which point Grubb fires one shot into the car windshield. According to the Associated Press, the police said they tried to save her life, but Young later died at the hospital.
Grubb is still employed by the Blendon Township Police Department, where he has worked since 2019 but has been on paid administrative leave since the incident.
Young’s grandmother, Nadine Young, 61 said in a press conference that seeing the bodycam footage “tore me all the way up.” She also revealed that she’s been raising her late granddaughter’s two sons, ages three and six just as she’d helped raised Young and that this past year had been heartbreaking for her. “It’s been like a whirlwind of just hurt and pain,” she said.
Sean Walton, the family’s attorney, said that Grubb should never have drawn his gun or jumped in front of the vehicle “Everything he did escalated that situation, and that’s why Ta’Kiya was murdered,” he said.
However, Officer Grubb’s lawyers, Mark Collins and Kaitlyn Stephens said in a statement that evidence will prove his “actions were justified” because the video shows the vehicle hitting him, reports the NY Times.
Blendon Township Police Department’s own use-of-force policy, advises officers to move away from an approaching vehicle rather than shoot at the car or its occupants, according to AP. A firearm should only be used if “the officer 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.”
During the press conference, Walton also vehemently opposed the argument often heard when Black people are killed by police: that Young should have simply complied or that her alleged shoplifting justified a death sentence. “In no scenario does somebody shoplifting contribute at all to their murder by a police officer,” he continued “She bears no responsibility.”
Young is far from the only unarmed Black woman who police have killed in recent years. In 2020, Breonna Taylor was killed in her Louisville, Kentucky, home when officers burst into her apartment with a no-knock warrant and exchanged gunfire with her boyfriend, who thought the police were intruders. Initially no charges were filed against the policemen but nationwide Black Lives Matter protests later that year with the rallying cry of “Say Her Name,” elevated Taylor’s case and eventually led to federal civil rights charges against one of the officers–as well as three other officers who were charged with conspiracy.
Last month, Sonya Massey was shot to death in her Springfield, Illinois home after calling police to her residence to report a possible trespasser. The officer in that case, Sean Grayson, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and one count each of official misconduct and aggravated battery with a firearm. Reflecting on the reality that all Black people, regardless of gender, are at risk for police violence, Massey’s father, James Wilburn, said in a CNN interview, “You’re used to having ‘the talk’ with boys, but now I guess we have to talk to our girls about … their interactions with the police.”
A story by Business Insider found that more than 50 Black women were killed by police between 2015 and 2021 and none of the officers involved were convicted of a crime.
But Walton believes the culture of unchecked police brutality may be ending, citing the fact that several Ohio police officers are currently facing trials for murder. He said, “I think that what we’re seeing is a changing of the climate where we can actually see accountability.”
For Young’s grandmother accountability would be Grubb spending the rest of his life in prison.
“That would be justice for me, and our family and her boys,” she said.