Grand jury indicts Ohio police officer who shot pregnant woman in 2023

A grand jury on Monday indicted 29-year-old Ohio police officer Connor Grubb in the murder of 21-year-old Ta'Kiya Young last year.

Bodycam footage shows the moments before a Blendon Township police officer shot and killed Ta'Kiya Young. [Photo: Blendon Township Police Department]

Young was six months pregnant when she was shot by Grubb in Blendon Township, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, on August 24, 2023. Both Young and her unborn child were pronounced dead at Mount Carmel St. Ann's Hospital in Westerville, Ohio, shortly after the shooting. She left behind two sons, a six-year-old and a three-year-old.

Grubb, who pleaded not guilty, is charged with four counts of murder, four counts of assault and two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of Young and her unborn daughter.

Grubb's prosecution is incredibly rare. According to Mapping Police Violence, there have been 366 police killings in Ohio since 2013, when it began systematically tracking police violence. Only 11 of those cases resulted in charges being brought against an officer, and only two resulted in an officer being convicted, not including Young's killing.

One officer, former Pike County Deputy Joel Jenkins, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the 2017 death of Jason Brady in an off-duty shooting and was sentenced to 3.5 years. The other, Columbus Police Detective Demetris Ortega, was convicted of failing to stop after a hit-and-run crash, also off-duty, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison last year for the killing of Naimo Abdirahman.

Nationally, data from the Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database shows that at least 140 police officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter since 2005. Only about a third of those officers have been convicted on any charge, and only seven have been convicted of murder. This compares to the more than 10,000 people killed by police since 2013, with the killing rate above 1,000 per year.

The fact that Grubb was charged at all is a reflection of the brutality with which Young and her unborn child were shot to death in public. To quell mass outrage over the killing, prosecutors delayed a decision on whether to charge Grubb for nearly a year to prevent a resurgence of the protests that erupted after her death last year.

Body camera footage clearly shows that Young was the victim of a brutal police killing that amounts to an execution by a police state. The footage shows two police officers in the parking lot of a Kroger grocery store helping a person who had locked their keys in their car. A Kroger employee can be heard accusing Young of stealing alcohol from the store.

One of the officers approached Young's car, which she had just gotten into, and began banging on her driver's window, repeatedly asking her to exit the vehicle without giving any reason. The name of this officer has not been released because police claim he was the victim of an assault by Young.

Blendon Township Police Chief John Belford vehemently supported the two officers after the shooting, falsely claiming that Young attempted to use her vehicle as a weapon against the officers. Belford claimed Grubb was a “victim of attempted assault with a vehicle” and the other officer was the victim of “minor assault” because his arm was allegedly trapped in the car window as the car slowly rolled away.

Young partially rolled down her window to ask the officer why she was being asked to exit the vehicle. Only then did the officer tell her she was being charged with shoplifting. Young denied the charges while Grubb stood in front of the car, which was running but not moving.

Police officers often use this tactic to justify the use of force. They can then claim that they are in danger when a car starts moving.

Young placed her hands on the steering wheel and turned it far to the right, indicating she was trying to get around Grubb, who drew his pistol, although there were no signs that Young had a weapon or posed a threat to either officer. The other officer used a window breaker to smash Young's driver's window while she can be heard asking, “Are you going to shoot me?”

Young's car then slowly drove toward Grubb, who fired a single shot through the windshield into Young's heart. Her car continued to roll as officers yelled at her to get out of the vehicle before it crashed into a wall. Footage shows that officers then smashed her window to open the door and render aid, and that she was slumped over the steering wheel.

What is clear in the video is that the officers were aggressive and prepared to use deadly force against Young if she did not comply with their demands. Young was clearly in fear for her life as the second officer attempted to break her window and Grubb pointed a gun at her. The incredibly slow speed of the vehicle posed no threat to Grubb's life, who used deadly force because she was accused of petty theft, a crime punishable by up to six months in prison.

Although Kroger eventually released surveillance videos showing Young and several other individuals bagging multiple bottles of alcohol and then leaving the store without paying, the officers' response was clearly disproportionate to their actions.

Grubb's actions were also a violation of township policy, which states that an officer should move away from an approaching vehicle and not fire his weapon. Officers should only shoot when they “reasonably believe that no other reasonable means are available to avert the immediate threat posed by the vehicle or when deadly force not exerted by the vehicle is being directed at the officer or others.”

Sean Walton, the Young family's attorney, called the indictment of Grubb a “celebratory victory,” saying, “The actions that led to Ta'Kiya's death – the unnecessary aggression, the horrific orders that amounted to 'obey or die' – were there for all of us to see in horrific clarity. Ta'Kiya's life and that of her daughter were snuffed out in an act of brutality, yet another symbol of the urgent need for reform in police conduct and accountability.”

Young is one of many on a growing list of victims of police violence across the United States. So far this year, police officers across the country have killed 815 people, so 2024 could break last year's record of 1,351. In Franklin County, Ohio alone, which includes Columbus and its suburbs, four other police officers have been indicted by grand juries since 2019 on crimes related to on-duty shootings. Several other shootings in the county did not result in a grand jury indictment. Of the 11 Ohio indictments in Mapping Police Violence's database, six are from Franklin County. All but one occurred this decade.

At least 74 people have been killed by police in Franklin County since 2013. That's 20 percent of the state total, compared to 10 percent of the county's population. Eight people have already been killed by police in Franklin County this year, including Benjamin Wheeler, who was shot by a SWAT team on August 1 while suffering a mental health crisis.

Grand jury indicts Ohio police officer who shot pregnant woman in 2023

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