TaKiya Young, A pregnant woman is dead after police fatally shot her at a Kroger in Blendon Township on Thursday evening.
The mother-of-two was shot and killed by police after allegedly stealing liquor from a store and driving her car towards an officer.
Who was TaKiya Young?
TaKiya Young, 21, from Columbus, Ohio, and her unborn baby daughter died during the altercation on Thursday evening in Blendon. She was six months pregnant.
A Kroger supermarket employee told officers – who were at the store for an unrelated matter – that multiple people were fleeing with stolen items, Blendon Police Chief John Belford said.
That included mother-of-two Young – who had allegedly taken multiple bottles of alcohol from the Kroger store.
One officer went to the driver’s side of the expectant mother’s car and told her to stop, Belford said, while the other officer moved in front of her four-door sedan.
Young then put the car in gear and accelerated forward and the officer directly in the vehicle’s path fired one shot through the front windshield, the police chief claims.
The pregnant woman’s car then traveled about 50 feet before coming to a stop on the sidewalk outside the supermarket.
Her car was locked – so officers broke the driver’s window to to get Young out of the vehicle. She was transported to Mount Carmel St. Ann’s hospital.
She was pronounced dead a short time later. Young was due to give birth in November, her family told The Columbus Dispatch.
Her unborn daughter did not survive the shooting. Young was the mother of two sons, ages 6 and 3.
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is leading the investigation into the fatal shooting.
The names of the two officers and further information about them — including their ages and race — have not been released.
They are on paid administrative leave while the shooting is investigated, which is standard procedure in such incidents, Belford said.
The shooting was captured on police body cam video, and officers said it will be released later in the week.
Young’s family told The Columbus Dispatch they have many questions about the shooting, mainly why she was deemed a lethal threat.
‘She stole something from the store,’ her grandmother, Nadine Young, told the newspaper.
‘You didn’t have to shoot the woman; she would have eventually gotten out of the … car. You didn’t have to kill her and the baby.’
More than two dozen family and friends gathered Friday night at Young’s grandmother’s home in memory of the young mother and her unborn child.
Her grandmother said Young ‘had a knack’ for bringing family together and that the police shooting has them scrambling into action.
She said: ‘We’re all going to be rallying around (her sons), and be the village for them.
‘Taking care of them, getting them into school, and keeping them focused and not having them hate the police. I don’t want them growing up like that.’
In his statement on Friday, Belford said that body camera footage will be available – but is taking time to process.
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