Police in America should not have guns. This story baffles me. A woman was seen shoplifting some alcohol and got in her car to drive away. Police attempted to stop her, but rather than getting out of the way of her car, and following the woman, an officer chose to shoot her dead, through the windshield of her oncoming vehicle.
The woman died. The car kept moving. I doubt the store is getting the alcohol back, and two children lost their mother.
Police officers in Ohio shot and killed a 21-year-old Black pregnant woman, who was also the mother of 6-year-old and 3-year-old sons, outside a Kroger store on Thursday. The police allege the woman stole liquor from the store and claim she tried to drive over an officer who got in front of her car. The woman, Ta'Kiya Young of Columbus, Ohio, was six months pregnant and set to give birth in November.
Belford said in a Friday video message that two officers who were in the parking lot of the grocery store were alerted by employees that Young had taken several liquor bottles without paying and was fleeing in a vehicle without a license plate. Belford said the officers repeatedly called on Young to step out of the vehicle, with one officer standing next to the car and another in front of it. "The officer who was directly in the path of the oncoming car fired one shot through the front windshield," Belford said. "The body camera footage I've reviewed also confirms the officer was directly in the path of the car." According to Belford, after the officer shot Young, the car ran for about 50 feet until stopping at a brick wall, at which point the officers broke the driver's window to give Young first aid.
Belford's version of events has come under heavy scrutiny from advocates who point out the well-documented history of police dishonesty as a tactic to justify fatal shootings and other violence. The Columbus Dispatch reports that at a small gathering to protest Young's death late Friday, a woman named Malissa Thomas-St. Clair, co-founder of Mothers of Murdered Columbus Children, said she had been Young's school teacher and expressed outrage at the circumstances of Young's death. "When I'm hearing that shoplifting now equates with losing your life—and you're pregnant. That deserves outrage," Thomas-St. Clair said to the crowd. She continued, "Young people make mistakes, but because I make mistakes, I should learn from them and not die from them."
Let her flee. Follow her car. Why is the first response to gun people down over a couple of bottles?
