Photo: ANDRI TAMBUNAN/AFP/Getty Images
By: The opinion
Police in Blendon Township, Ohio, have released body camera footage showing the shooting that killed pregnant Ta’Kiya Young in a Kroger parking lot last week.
The 21-year-old from Columbus was pronounced dead shortly after the Aug. 24 shooting outside a grocery store in Blendon Township.
The five-minute video, which may be disturbingly graphic, shows a police officer standing in front of his vehicle shooting Young within 30 seconds of the interaction beginning. Young began to steer away from the two officers before accelerating, but as he moved forward, his car began to push the officer before the officer fired.
Authorities have not released the identities of the officers involved or the race of the victim, who has been identified by community organizations as an African-American woman.
The video, captured with the shooter’s body camera, begins when Young was inside a vehicle in the parking lot of a shopping center in Westerville, a suburb north of Columbus.
An officer stands by the driver’s door repeatedly asking Young to get out of the vehicle as another officer, wearing a body camera, stands in front of the car.
Young, with two children, ages 6 and 3, says she hasn’t stolen anything from the store and is reluctant to leave the vehicle. At that moment, the officer in front of the car points her gun at the young pregnant woman while he also orders her to get out.
As the vehicle begins to move, the agent fires once at Young. After the shot, the car rolls slowly and crashes into the mall while Young appears reclining in the passenger seat.
This Friday, Blendon Police Chief John Belford said in a statement that the shooter is on administrative leave and has asked the Ohio Criminal Investigation Bureau to conduct an independent investigation into what happened.
Belford justified the delay in the publication of the video by the need to suppress some excerpts according to state laws, as well as to allow its review by lawyers.
The US police have been repeatedly accused by human rights organizations of using violence disproportionately towards the black population in the country.
According to data from Mapping Police Violence, which collects national data on police violence, in 2022 the Police killed at least 1,201 people in the United States. Of these, 26% were black despite the fact that they only represent 13% of the US population, the association explained.
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