The 15-year-old sister of Ma’Khia Bryant sought help from Columbus police weeks before her sister was killed at the hands of one of their officers. According to The Associated Press, she called 911 on March 28 to report that she’d gotten into an argument with Bryant and their foster mother, Angela Moore, and ask if she could be placed elsewhere.
“I don’t want to be here no more,” the girl told a police dispatcher, to which authorities explained they were unable to assist her. A police report claims then Bryant’s younger sister “became irate and stated that if she does not get to leave, then she was going to kill someone in the home.”
She was then taken to a hospital for a psychological evaluation.
The call from Bryant’s sister is one of the many calls cops have received from the foster home where the 16-year-old had been staying since February. Moore made over a dozen phone calls since 2017, asking for help in finding the whereabouts of her foster children, many of whom left the home for various reasons.
Bryant was shot four times by Officer Nicholas Reardon as she waited for cops to respond to her call of a physical altercation. Moore explained that the 16-year-old fought with two of her former foster children who had come to visit her for her birthday. The argument, she said, took place after Bryant took issue with their order to clean up the house. “You’re not the guardian of me,” the late teen reportedly said at the time.
Though the foster mother claimed that they “argue all the time,” the fight escalated, inciting the teen to grab a knife for defense and, per Bryant’s aunt, call 911 for some assistance. When officers arrived to the scene, they discovered her wielding a knife at a person, and she was fatally shot. Bryant’s loved ones gathered on Friday (April 30) to celebrate her life at her funeral service in Columbus, Ohio.
The Bureau of Criminal Investigation is currently looking into the deadly shooting, but Bryant’s family and Andrew Ginther, the mayor of Columbus, have called for federal probes to be conducted as well.