COLUMBUS, Ohio — Family and friends of Ta’Kiya Young gathered at a Columbus church on Thursday to honor her life and the life of her unborn child.
Young, who was pregnant with her third child, was fatally shot by a Blendon Township police officer on Aug. 24 in the parking lot of a Kroger grocery store. Her unborn daughter did not survive.
The officer who fired the shot is on administrative leave and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is still looking into the case.
Around 100 people showed up to the Church of Christ on Genessee Avenue where funeral services were held, many dawning Young’s favorite color – pink. The funeral marked two weeks since she died.
Danielle Rivers, Young’s maternal grandmother, who buried Young’s mother just a year ago, told The Associated Press that it still hasn’t hit her that she's lost both a daughter and granddaughter. She can’t eat or sleep.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” Rivers, tears streaming down her cheeks, said in an interview with AP. Young was a “smart girl” who was “beautiful inside and out."
The 21-year-old mom was an aspiring social worker.
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.
Ahead of Young's funeral, her paternal grandmother, Nadine Young, who helped raise her, recalled Ta’Kiya as a high-spirited prankster and a popular, “fun-loving, feisty young lady" who nevertheless struggled with the sudden death of her mother last year, and who was just beginning to find her way in life.
Now, the family is focusing on Ta’Kiya’s two sons, ages 6 and 3. The oldest, Ja’Kobie, talks about his mother. The youngest, Ja’Kenlie, doesn’t quite understand she’s gone.
“We just show them a whole lot of love and let them know they’ve got a little village surrounding them and loving on them,” Nadine told the AP.
Nadine said the video of Ta’Kiya’s violent death was heart-wrenching to watch, the shooting "void of any humanity or decency at all."
The body camera video shows one of two officers walking to the driver’s side of the vehicle Young was in. The other officer was seen walking in front of the vehicle.
The officers are heard telling Young to get out of the car multiple times. Young was heard responding to the officers, saying "For what?"
One of the officers replied, "They said you stole stuff. Do not leave."
She replied that she didn't steal anything, other girls were taking it.
The officer replied said, "Then get out."
Young said, "I'm not going to do that."
One of the officers is seen pointing his firearm at Young through the windshield.
Young was heard saying, "Are you going to shoot me?"
She then put the car in gear and began driving the vehicle forward with the officer directly in the vehicle's path. The officer fired one shot through the front windshield and struck her.
Nadine said she believes her granddaughter feared for her safety.
“I believe he was a bully," she said at 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.”
Sean Walton, the family’s lawyer, said the officer had no reason to even point his gun at Ta’Kiya, let alone fire it.
The officer, whose name has not been released by authorities, “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.
Before her death, Ta’Kiya Young had moved around a bit, staying with her father in Sandusky and working as a ticket taker at Cedar Point amusement park. More recently, she’d been staying with her grandmother in the Columbus area, a few hours from Sandusky, to celebrate the family's summer birthdays and participate in a remembrance of her mother, Dan’neka Hope.
Ta'Kiya's mother's death had “kind of messed with her," Nadine 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.”
Malissa Thomas-St. Clair, a local teacher and founder of Mothers of Murdered Columbus Children, taught Ta’Kiya in a seventh grade math class. She remembers meeting, and later mentoring an adolescent who was navigating adversity early on in her life.
“She was enduring trauma up until death,” Thomas-St. Clair said through tears. “That experience she experienced, in those last moments of her life, was exactly what she had been experiencing her entire life. Trauma. All she was looking for was a roadmap to a way of being present in life.”
Thomas-St. Clair said they bonded over the fact that both became mothers as teenagers.
“She was looking for somebody to fill those voids, to complete what was missing in her heart,” she said. "And what she found was her children, who she loved unconditionally.”
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. She 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, “because she was waiting for that letter.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.