Columbus police have released bodycam footage showing the officer shooting of 15-year-old Makhia Bryant, who was fatally gunned down just moments before Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all counts for the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
In an attempt to show more transparency and ease tensions as Black Lives Matter protesters descended on the scene, the police department released footage that appears to show the teen run out of her home with a knife.
Bryant can be seen with a knife as she storms out of the home and towards another woman, with the woman falling backwards.
Makhia Bryant – identified by her mother on social media – was taken to Mount Carmel East hospital in critical condition but was pronounced dead at 5.21pm, WCMH reports. ‘She was a good kid. She was loving,’ Hazel Bryant, the girl’s aunt, told reporters on the street. ‘She was 15 years old. She didn’t deserve to die like a dog in the street.
Police had been responding to a report of a stabbing before the fatal shooting. A witness said Makhia, who Hazel Bryant said lived in a foster home, got into an altercation with another resident of the home and was armed with the knife to defend herself when police arrived.
