New case of police abuse in the United States. A video released by the municipal police of Blendon Township, in Ohio, shows an officer fatally shooting a young black pregnant woman through the windshield of the vehicle in which she was. The incident occurred last week when a grocery store clerk accused the woman, 21-year-old Ta'kiya Young, of stealing bottles of alcohol. Both the young woman and her fetus died as a result of police intervention.
The video, captured with the shooter's body camera, begins when Young is inside a vehicle in the parking lot of a shopping center in Westerville, a suburb north of Columbus. The officer, standing by the driver's door, repeatedly asks him to get out of the car while another police officer - the one with the body camera - stands in front of the car.
As can be seen from the images, when she was cornered, the victim denies that she had stolen anything from the store and refuses to leave the vehicle. At that moment, the officer in front of the car points the gun at the young woman and tells her to get out of it. But she ignores it, so when the car starts to move the agent decides to shoot. In the images you can see how, from that moment, the car rolls slowly and crashes into the shopping center.
In a statement, Blendon Police Chief John Belford said the shooter, whose identity has not been released, is on administrative leave and has asked the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to conduct an investigation. regardless of what happened. Likewise, Belford justified the delay in the publication of the video by the need to suppress some extracts according to state laws, as well as to allow its review by lawyers. Another piece of information that has come out is that the victim, in addition to being expecting a baby, was the mother of two children, ages 6 and 3.
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 them, 26% were black despite the fact that they only represent 13% of the US population, explained that association.
