COLUMBUS – About 100 people showed up at the Church of Christ in Columbus Thursday for the funeral of Ta’Kiya Young, many of them dressed in various shades of vibrant pink — her favorite color.
Family and friends, tearful and clutching tissues, entered the church’s sanctuary to view Young’s body, dressed in bright fuchsia under a clear casket cover that was illuminated in pink light. The body of her unborn daughter, wearing white, lay in her mother’s embrace. The powerful voices of a gospel soloist and backing choir filled the sanctuary.
The 21-year-old pregnant Black woman was fatally shot by police in a supermarket parking lot in Blendon Township on Aug. 24. Her funeral is Thursday.
Young’s family wants the officer who shot her to be immediately fired and charged in her death and the death of her unborn child. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is leading the investigation. The police union has said that calls to charge the officer before an investigation is complete are premature.
Her grandmother, Nadine Young, says Ta’Kiya was a spirited prankster and a “fun-loving, feisty young lady” who nonetheless had been struggling with the death of her mother last year.
Fateful encounter
Their Aug. 24 encounter, captured on police bodycam video released last week, was the latest in a troubling series of fatal shootings of Black adults and children by Ohio police, and followed various episodes of police brutality against Black people across the nation over the past several years. The confrontations have prompted widespread protests and demands for police reform.
In the video, an officer at the driver’s side window of the car Young is driving tells Ta’Kiya she’s been accused of shoplifting and orders her out of the car, while a second officer stands in front of the car. Young protests, both officers curse at her and yell at her to get out, and Young can be heard asking them, “Are you going to shoot me?”
Seconds later, she turns the steering wheel to the right, the car rolls slowly toward the officer standing in front of it, and the officer fires his gun through the windshield.
Nadine Young said she believes her granddaughter feared for her safety.
“I believe he was a bully,” she told a news conference on Wednesday, referring to the officer who shot Ta’Kiya. “He came at her like a bully, and that scared her with that baby in her stomach. She’s like scared, just a man walking up to her, cussing at her, and she not really knowing why.”
Sean Walton, the family’s lawyer, said his firm is seeking the officer’s personnel file and wants to speak with people who’ve had interactions with him. He said one witness said the officer had previously arrested her 17-year-old son for jaywalking and told him “that his days were numbered,” Walton said.
He said the officer had no reason to even point his gun at Ta’Kiya, let alone fire it.
The officer “could’ve clearly just eased out of the way of that slow-moving vehicle but instead chose to shoot Ta’Kiya directly in her chest and kill her,” he said.
A life of struggles
Ta’Kiya’s mother’s death had “kind of messed with her,” Nadine Young said, and she urged her to get counseling. Ta’Kiya and her grandmother — both of them strong-willed — clashed at times. But their bond remained unshakable, and they spoke every day.
Ta’Kiya also struggled with housing insecurity but had not been in much serious trouble in her short life.
In 2021, she was arrested following a traffic stop in Whitehall, in which police said she refused to get out of her car when ordered. Court records indicate Ta’Kiya was jailed briefly before pleading guilty to disorderly conduct. But she moved past that incident relatively quickly, according to her grandmother and the family lawyer. Court records also said she had open charges for petty theft in which her address was listed as “homeless.”
Despite Ta’Kiya’s struggles, a bright future seemed on the horizon for her. She intended to go back to school after the birth of the baby this fall and had her sights set on a house.
“The struggle was going to be over once she got into the house,” Nadine Young said. “Her and the kids having this nice place, knowing it was theirs, and not having to stay with other people. That was the biggest thing in the world for her. She would’ve been set.”
This week, a notification from the public housing authority came in the mail.
She’d been approved.
“That hurt me to my core,” said Nadine Young, “because she was waiting for that letter.”