COLUMBUS – Ma’Khia Bryant was one of at least six people were fatally shot by officers across the United States in the 24 hours after jurors reached a verdict in the murder case against Chauvin on Tuesday.
As the nation watched the judge read the verdict against Chavuin on Tuesday afternoon, an officer hundreds of miles away was listening over his patrol car radio in a neighborhood in Columbus. Minutes earlier, a colleague fatally shot a teenage girl.
Police had been called to the house after someone called 911 and reported being physically threatened. Body camera footage shows an officer approaching a group of people in the driveway as the teenager, Ma’Khia Bryant, swings a knife wildly. Moments later, the girl charges at a young woman pinned against a car.
The officer fires four shots before Bryant slumps to the ground. A black-handled blade, similar to a kitchen or steak knife, lies on the sidewalk next to her.
“You didn’t have to shoot her! She’s just a kid, man!” a man shouted at the officer.
The officer responds, “She had a knife. She just went at her.”
Later, an anguished neighbor yells at officers: “Do you see why Black lives matter? Do you get it now?”
Bryant, who was in foster care at the time, was a shy, quiet girl who liked making hair and dance videos on TikTok, her grandmother, Debra Wilcox, told The Associated Press. Her family says her actions that day were out of character.
“I don’t know what happened there unless she was fearful for her life,” Wilcox said.
The deaths in some cases sparked new cries for justice. Some people say the shootings reflect an urgent need for radical changes to American policing, and a need that the Chauvin verdict can’t paper over.
For other people, the shootings are a tragic reminder of the difficult and dangerous decisions law enforcement face daily.
There’s hope that the Chauvin verdict might be a crucial juncture in the national conversation about race, policing and the use of force.
Though officials have said Bryant’s death was a tragedy, they point to laws allowing police to use deadly force to protect themselves and others.
The officer’s actions were “an act of heroism” with tragic results, said the National Fraternal Order of Police president, “yet another demonstration of the impossible situations” police face.