The foster mother who was caring for a 16-year-old girl who was shot by police as she was holding a knife has revealed more about the circumstances that preceded the fatal shooting.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Ma’Khia Bryant was shot and killed by a police officer just seconds after he arrived to a residence in southwest Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday. The officer was responding to a 911 call placed by someone at the home, claiming someone was trying to stab them. While Bryant’s relatives have said that the teen girl was the 911 caller, police have not confirmed this.
Police body cam footage shows officer Nicholas Reardon arriving to the residence, where several people were scuffling in the yard and the driveway. Bryant is seen in the footage with what appears to be a knife in her hand, lunging at another female. At the point the officer fires multiple shots, and Bryant falls to the ground.
Reardon has been taken off street duty while state authorities investigate the shooting.
READ MORE: New police body cam footage shows fatal shooting of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant [VIDEO]
An CNN reports, Bryant had been living as a foster child in Angela Moore’s home for about two months before she was killed. Moore told the news station that some of her former foster children had come to the house that day to celebrate Moore’s birthday. and had gotten into an argument about housework.
“It was over keeping the house clean,” Moore said. “The older one told them to clean up the house because ‘Mom doesn’t like the house dirty … So that’s how it all started.”
Moore was at work when the argument began and did not arrive home before the fatal incident, and said her former foster children filled her in what happened when she returned home. The woman wearing pink in the police body cam video is believed to be one of Moore’s former foster children who was visiting that day, and she reportedly called Moore to share the tragic news. The CNN report indicates that the other people involved in the fight seen on police body cam footage are adults;
“They argue all the time, but I never thought it would escalate like that,” Moore told CNN. “I never in my worst nightmare would have thought it would ever come to this.”
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