Foster mom reveals Ma'Khia Bryant brawled with two other girls over an unmade bed during birthday celebration before the 16-year-old was shot dead by police while charging at two people with a knife
Ma'Khia Bryant's foster mother has revealed the 16-year-old and two other girls had a brawl over a messy house and an unmade bed before the teen was shot dead by police.
Angela Moore said two of her former foster children came to Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday for her birthday when the argument between the youngsters broke out.
She said the fight over the housework started before she had arrived home from work.
Police were called to a chaotic scene at the foster home where they saw Ma'Khia lunging at two girls with a knife before she was shot dead by officer Nicholas Reardon.
Moore told CNN: 'It was over keeping the house clean. The older one told them to clean up the house because "Mom doesn't like the house dirty."
'So that's how it all started.'
Moore said she was told that Ma'Khia had told the older girl: 'You're not the guardian of me.'
Moore said the girls argued 'all the time' since Ma'Khia moved into the home a few months ago and she was told by one of those involved in the brawl how it broke out.
'I never thought it would escalate like that,' Moore said.
Police bodycam footage shows the fateful moment a police officer shot 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday
Ma'Khia Bryant's foster mother has revealed the 16-year-old and two other girls had a brawl over a messy house and an unmade bed before she was shot dead
Angela Moore said two of her former foster children came to Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday for her birthday when the argument between the youngsters broke out. Pictured: investigators at the scene
She received a frantic phone call from one of the former foster children who is seen in the fateful police bodycam video wearing pink as Ma'Khia lunged at her with a knife before being gunned down by Reardon.
Moore said the young girl in pink told her: '"Mom, get home. Where are you? They're going crazy." She said they shot Ma'Kiah and I said, "Huh?" It was just crazy.'
The foster mother started to pray and received text messages from people sending their condolences before she had even arrived home to find the teenager dead.
Moore paid tribute to Ma'Khia as a 'fun' girl who loved to dance and help around the house, while her birth mother Paula said she loved music, cooking and making TikTok videos.
The revelations come after one of her neighbors, a military veteran, said his home security camera proves the Columbus Police officer had no choice but to shoot the teenager because more people could have been killed.
Donavon Brinson told Fox News Thursday morning he believes Bryant could have fatally stabbed the young woman she was seen lunging at with a knife if the cop hadn't opened fire.
'He could have either not fired and the young lady in pink could have been stabbed in the neck and brutally or fatally injured and then he could have shot [Bryant] and we could have had two [young women] dead - or he could have responded in the way that he did and one young lady lost her life,' he said.
Home security footage has captured a new angle of the shooting as a neighbor said he believes more people could have been killed if the officer hadn't shot the 16-year-old girl
Neighbor Donavon Brinson (pictured) who handed the home security footage to police said, after viewing it, he believes more people could have died if the cop hadn't shot Bryant. The incident 'was violent and all just happened so fast', he said
A second neighbor also said he believes police bodycam footage shows Bryant was in 'full attack mode' and 'needed to be stopped' because a 'young lady's life was at stake'.
Reardon shot Bryant four times at around 4.45pm on Tuesday on the 3100 block of Legion Lane while responding to a 911 call about an attempted stabbing.
New footage has emerged from a security camera on the garage of Brinson's home across the street from the foster home where Bryant was staying and where the incident unfolded out front.
It captured a new angle of the shooting, giving a glimpse into the moments leading up to the fatal incident.
The 26-second video shows a girl - now known to be Bryant - walking down a driveway toward other people at the very same moment that a police car pulls up outside the home.
Neighbor Ira Graham III (on right), said he believes the police bodycam footage shows Bryant was in 'full attack mode' and 'needed to be stopped'
The Columbus cop who fatally shot Ma'Khia Bryant has been identified as a member of the Air National Guard. Nicholas Reardon reportedly received the 'expert marksman' badge while in training
Bryant then appears to suddenly charge at another person in the driveway. What happened next was caught on police body camera footage released Wednesday.
Questions continue to mount over the shooting and the events leading up to it, as cops released a 911 call thought to have been made by the 16-year-old minutes before she died, in which she asks the dispatcher to send a police officer 'now' as some girls are 'trying to stab us.'
Bryant's family say she made the 911 call after a group of other girls were threatening violence, but Columbus Police Chief Michael Woods told reporters 'we do not know yet' if it is the teen's voice on the call.
Columbus Police released three body camera videos in a press conference Wednesday as the cop who fired the four shots that killed the 16-year-old was identified.
Paula Bryant on Thursday night spoke to CNN in a face mask bearing her daughter's name
Reardon had been on the force a little over a year, joining in December 2019 after serving in the Air National Guard as a military policeman.
Ma'Khia's mother Paula has since compared herself to the mother of Breonna Taylor, saying: 'Now I know what it is like to lose a child.'
Bryant, asked by CNN's Chris Cuomo what his daughter would want, replied: 'The killing must stop'.
It's not clear why her daughter had been in foster care, and it wasn't addressed in the interview.
She described her daughter as 'peaceful and loving'.
'I've always had sympathy for the Breonna Taylor story, and the family and her friends and her situation - and now I know what it feels like to lose a child,' she said.
Paula Bryant, whose daughter Ma'Khia was killed on Tuesday, pleaded for an end to bloodshed
Breonna Taylor, 26, was shot and killed by Louisville police in March 2020
Ma'Khia Bryant (left) with her mother Paula, in a Facebook photo posted by Paula
Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman, was fatally shot in her own home in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13, 2020, when police stormed in during the night.
Bryant added: 'I'm a single mother of five kids and, you know, now Ma'Khia is gone and I only have four kids.'
Fighting back tears, she added: 'That is so hard for me to say.'
Bryant's daughter was in foster care, but she hoped to be reunited with her soon. The last time she saw her was last Thursday, when the teenager told her mother she had made honor roll at school.
She said: 'I was at the dentist's office in Columbus, Ohio. I said hello, and I got the disturbing news that Ma'Khia was shot.
'I said - what? The dentist's assistant helped me off the chair.
'My heart was beating fast, and I didn't know what to think.
'No parent should have to go through this. This is so unreal. I'm devastated.'
She added: 'She was peaceful, she was loving, she wanted everybody to get along.
'She was a Christian.'
She said she wanted to remember the good things about her daughter.
Bryant told Cuomo that she had watched the video of her daughter's killing, and called for an end to the loss of life.
Columbus police released bodycam footage showing Ma'Khia with a knife (circled)
A woman writes Ma'Khia's name in chalk in Columbus, Ohio, on Thursday
'The killing needs to stop. There's been too many killings in the world. I want the killing to stop,' she said.
'Ma'Khia is gone. And I want the killing in the world to stop, and that's what Ma'Khia would want.'
She said: 'Ma'Khia is in God's hands. I have faith in God.'
Her daughter was named after a male prophet in the Bible.
Officials with the Columbus Division of Police had released initial footage of the shooting Tuesday night just hours after it happened, which was a departure from protocol as the force faces immense scrutiny from the public following a series of recent high-profile police killings that have led to clashes.
'The fact that I see what I saw on that video is not how I know my Ma'Khia,' said her grandmother, Debra Wilcox.
She told The Associated Press on Wednesday: 'I don't know what happened there unless she was fearful for her life.'
Paula Bryant has said she wants answers in her daughter's killing
The incident has caused an outcry in the community and nationwide as Bryant's killing is the second high-profile fatal shooting of a teenager by police in the last month. Body camera footage released last week showed an officer shoot and kill 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago.
'It's a tragedy. There's no other way to say it. It's a 16-year-old. I'm a father,' said Michael Woods, interim Columbus Police Chief.
'Her family is grieving. Regardless of the circumstances associated with this, a 16-year-old lost her life yesterday.'
He added: 'I sure as hell wish it wouldn't have happened.'
White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the Columbus shooting 'tragic' and said President Joe Biden has been briefed on it.
'She was a child. We're thinking of her friends and family and the communities that are hurting and grieving her loss,' Psaki said in a statement.
Protesters in Columbus took to the streets on Wednesday to demand justice for Ma'Khia
The 10-second body camera clip begins with the officer, identified Wednesday as Nicholas Reardon, getting out of his car at a house where police had been dispatched after someone had called 911 saying they were being physically threatened, Woods said.
It remains unclear who called the police.
A spokesperson for the Air National Guard in Ohio confirmed to DailyMail.com that Reardon is a Staff Sergeant assigned to the 121st Security Forces Squadron and has served with the National Guard since 2015.
His alma mater's Twitter account said he earned the expert marksman badge for the M4A1 Carbine fully automatic assault rifle used by the military.
Reardon, who was hired by the force in December 2019, is seen taking a few steps toward a group of people in the driveway when Bryant starts swinging a knife wildly at another girl or woman, who falls backward.
The officer shouts several times to get down.
Bryant then charges at another girl or woman, who is pinned against a car.
From a few feet away, with people on either side of him, the officer fires four shots, and Bryant slumps to the ground. A black-handled blade similar to a kitchen knife or steak knife lies on the sidewalk next to her.
Officer Nicholas Reardon is seen standing on the scene after shooting and killing Bryant. He has been on the force since December 2019
A man immediately yells at the officer: 'You didn't have to shoot her! She's just a kid, man!'
The officer responds: 'She had a knife. She just went at her.'
The officer has been taken off patrolling the streets for the time being.
Bryant was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead, police said. Police did not say if anyone else was injured.
In the moments after the shooting, people living or visiting the street filmed as police roped off the area with yellow tape in front of the house where the shooting took place.
A neighbor's video shows an officer performing CPR on the teenager while a man can be heard yelling: 'You all just jumped out of the (expletive) car and shot her!'
People listen as friends of Ma'Khia Bryant speak about her at a community vigil, on Wednesday, at Douglas Elementary School in Columbus, Ohio
Neighbors stood in open doorways filming and behind cars shaking their heads, eyewitness footage showed.
Woods said state law allows police to use deadly force to protect themselves or others, and investigators will determine whether this shooting was such an instance.
Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation is now reviewing the killing following a recent agreement with the city.
The shooting happened about 25 minutes before a judge read the verdict convicting former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin of murder and manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd.
It also took place less than five miles from where the funeral for Andre Hill, who was killed by another Columbus police officer in December, was held earlier this year.
The officer in Hill's case, Adam Coy, a 19-year veteran of the force, is now facing trial for murder, with the next hearing scheduled for April 28.
Less than three weeks before Hill was killed, a Franklin County Sheriff's deputy fatally shot 23-year-old Casey Goodson Jr. in Columbus. The case remains under federal investigation.
Last week, Columbus police shot and killed a man who was in a hospital emergency room with a gun on him. Officials are continuing an investigation into that shooting.
Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, said on Wednesday that he watched the footage of Bryant's killing and called it a 'horrible tragedy.'
He added that while the public has the video evidence, 'we need to let the investigation play out.'
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