‘Red flags:’ Experts say multiple agencies failed mom, baby killed by KC-area police

A month after Mitchell Holder’s partner and daughter were killed by Independence police in November, the bedroom where they all slept and where the fatal shooting occurred had already been stripped bare.

In edited body camera footage released by police, the bedroom can be seen to have a rocking chair, a white box fan and the couple’s bed on Nov. 7, the day of the shooting. Holder said his partner who was killed that day, Maria Pike, had decorated their one-bedroom apartment at Oval Spring Apartments after she’d moved in a year prior.

But a month after their deaths, the bedroom sat empty. Two bullet holes scarred the white wall.

No carpet, no decorations, and no recollection of Pike, 34, and their child, 2-month-old Destinii remained, except for a poster with their pictures sitting on top of a cabinet in the walk-in bedroom closet, where Destinii’s nursery had once been set up.

Holder said after the shooting, he threw out most of their belongings, explaining they were either “contaminated” with their blood or the memories of his lost loved ones were too much for him to live with.

“I can’t handle it, it’s too stressful for me,” Holder said.

Holder was in the room with Pike and police on that fateful day.

Thus far, Independence police have provided few details about the deadly encounter. Most of the publicly known details about the incident come from property managers and Holder’s family members, including Holder’s mother, Talisa Coombs, who called police to the apartment after an alleged physical altercation with Pike.

Bodycam footage, which police edited with written statements explaining their version of the officers’ roles in the incident, shows at least one officer speaking to Coombs outside of Holder’s apartment around 1:55 p.m. Officers can be seen entering the building at 2:01 p.m. Holder opened the door for the responding officers around 2:04, and at 2:05 they began speaking with Pike from outside of the closet where she was holding Destinii, the department wrote in the video.

The five minutes of bodycam footage show Pike standing silently with only physical responses like head nods and head shakes to an officer’s questions. One of the statements said officers spoke to Pike for more than 11 minutes.

At 2:15 p.m., Pike can be seen leaving the closet and sitting on the bed with Destinii for seven seconds in silence. The provided footage then jumps ahead one minute and 35 seconds, at which point Pike can be seen grabbing a large knife from the nightstand, standing up and moving toward the officer, knife raised.

It was then that a police officer fired, killing both Maria Pike and baby Destinii. The video released by police stops just before the fatal shooting.

Holder said the baby’s blood splashed on his glasses after the officer opened fire.

“I saw my daughter’s skull, a chunk of it was gone,” Holder said. Before the shooting, officers asked Holder to take Destinii out of Pike’s arms, but he said he refused to help them. He said he wasn’t going to separate his daughter from her mother.

Holder said officers then refused to render aid to Pike after she was shot, arrested him while he was shirtless, and transported him to the Blue Springs Police Department. He wasn’t held in custody but was questioned about the shooting and released around four hours later. Police never asked him about the alleged physical altercation that was the reason for the 911 call that brought them to their apartment that day, he said.

After her death, Holder’s family members described Pike as having mental and anger issues, including postpartum depression. Pike had two children before Destinii, but neither was in her custody. After Destinii’s birth on Aug. 22, just two months before her killing, Pike told hospital workers she was homeless and thinking of harming herself, according to family members.

Two outside mental health experts who evaluated the case for The Star questioned why Pike didn’t immediately undergo a mental health evaluation. Due to hospital confidentiality rules, it’s not known whether that happened. It is, however, known that social services were called.

In fact, that hospital confession put her squarely in the eyes of the Missouri Department of Social Services and at odds with Coombs, who told The Star she constantly checked on the couple and her granddaughter. According to Holder and Nina Book, Pike’s twin sister, Pike’s fear of losing Destinii made her territorial of the child as she contended with what they described as questionable mental health, setting up the perfect storm for a tragic outcome when Independence police arrived at her door that day.

Then, just over two months after her daughter’s birth, the final chapter of Pike’s turbulent life in Independence, along with that of her child, ended in a spray of gunfire at the hands of police.

The shooting has left family members questioning why no one — from state welfare officials to police — offered the struggling mother mental health support earlier, before her trauma led to her death, or intervened to ensure the safety of baby Destinii. The shooting is also the end of a saga that offers a glimpse into the limitations of a system dependent on people’s cooperation and consent for mental health treatment and family intervention, no matter how urgently that help is needed.

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Pike’s journey to Independence

Book, Pike’s twin sister, traced her and Pike’s — who she calls Masha — earliest stages of life to an orphanage in Tver, Russia, in 1990, when they were just three months old.

The twins were adopted six years later and lived in Nashville for three years before settling in Harrisonburg, Virginia, for the remainder of their childhoods. Book said she and her sister had a difficult family life.

“That scarred Masha worse than it scarred me,” Book said.

The twins grew up and left home for community college. A nature lover and traveler, Pike went to schools in Idaho and Utah for an associate’s degree in agriculture, according to Book. Pike stayed in Salt Lake City, where she married and had her first child.

Pike later divorced and moved around the country, depending on where relationships and her love for travel took her, while her oldest child stayed with her ex-husband, Book said. Book, who lives in Ohio, hosted Pike and her son briefly while Pike was going through the divorce and saw how good a mother Pike was, she said.

“I got to witness firsthand how much she loved her son,” Book said. “She was a great mom. There (were) no problems.”

Pike soon married again and had a child with her second husband. When that relationship ended, Pike thought being a single mother would be too hard and instead found a family to adopt her daughter with the help of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to Book.

Book said she and her sister both have trouble with emotional separation because of their orphanage background, but Pike insisted she would vet families herself to find a good home for her second-born.

After living with a friend in Utah, as well as a few other western states, meditation helped Pike decide she had been called to live in Independence, despite her nomadic existence.

“She felt like God had a mission, a higher mission, for her to go to Independence, Missouri. She didn’t know quite why,” Book said about her sister.

“She just felt like she was needed there,” Book said.

Pike had always enjoyed learning about religion, her sister said.

“She always believed she was a healer for people and to help people become aware of their emotions and the spiritual realm,” said Book.

Holder, who lives with dissociative identity disorder and anxiety, said he’d known Pike for around four years before they became a couple.

The relationship began when Holder provided Pike with a place to stay after she was kicked out of a friend’s home. After moving in, Pike asked Holder if she could tell her friends she had a boyfriend. Holder said yes.

“I thought she wasn’t even talking about me,” Holder said. Holder let Pike arrange the apartment to help her feel comfortable in their home.

Holder said he enjoyed learning about Maria. Pike was a problem solver, he said, and told him she could be a detective.

Book was worried when her sister first told her of her relationship with Holder, explaining that Pike had allegedly been verbally and physically abused in some of her past relationships. Book said she was relieved when Pike said her relationship with Holder was going well.

“She surprised me,” Book said. “She told me good things about Mitchell, and Mitchell had happy memories, too.”

‘That’s when she started freaking out’

Book and Holder’s relationship experienced some growing pains, however, and Pike’s anger issues showed themselves often, according to Holder.

Police records document 15 incidents where officers were called to the couple’s home since November 2022. Ten of those incidents list Holder, Pike or his relatives as being involved.

Three incident reports, one on Nov. 1 and two on Nov. 6, are listed as checks from the Department of Social Services.

In an incident on Feb. 29, one of Holder’s sisters got into a physical altercation with Pike while she was three months pregnant, according to police documents. Holder told his sister that Pike punched him in the face twice the week before during an argument, documents state.

Independence police have four reports of incidents that occurred at Holder’s home during Pike’s pregnancy. Holder said Pike had told him that she was depressed and overstimulated while she was pregnant.

Holder said Pike would sometimes become physical during their fights — biting or slapping him, or throwing things.

But he also recalled happier times of going to the zoo with Pike while she was pregnant, growing plants on their balcony and doing other projects around their home.

Coombs, who is Holder’s mother, said her relationship with Pike was good before Destinii’s birth. Coombs assisted Pike with doctor appointments and consistently checked on the couple throughout Pike’s pregnancy.

After Destinii was born, Coombs said, her relationship with Pike deteriorated.

At the hospital, Pike told hospital workers she was homeless and felt like hurting herself, Coombs previously told The Star. The Department of Social Services was called and was involved in the family’s life until Destinii’s death.

Coombs was the main point of contact for several DSS workers because Holder and Pike refused to answer calls and attend meetings, Coombs said. She said she constantly checked on both mother and baby at the request of DSS.

Holder said he refused to attend a meeting the day before the shooting because it was too cold outside and he was worried about Destinii’s health.

The claim that the couple refused to answer calls or attend meetings with has neither been confirmed or refuted by DSS, whose Director Robert Knodell previously told The Star he couldn’t discuss the case due to the ongoing investigation.

“Like three times a day,” Coombs previously told The Star. She said that was the origin of the tension between her and Pike.

“I couldn’t force them,” Coombs said about attempting to take the couple to DSS meetings.

“That’s when she started freaking out.”

‘All of those were red flags’

Book and members of Holder’s family believe Pike suffered from postpartum depression.

Brittany Dwyer, a Kansas City, Kansas-based therapist specializing in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, describes postpartum depression as “feeling sad, feeling hopeless, feeling like they can’t care for the baby, feeling detached from the baby.”

“There’s also perinatal depression, and that can happen throughout the pregnancy as well,” Dwyer said. The Star asked Dwyer, who didn’t know Pike, to evaluate the case based on bodycam footage and details provided by Book and Holder’s family members.

Book said Pike told her she was on medication for her postpartum symptoms less than a week after Destinii’s birth. Holder and Coombs said Pike mentioned taking “happy pills” around a month after Destinii’s birth. Family members couldn’t specifically name what medication Pike was on, but Holder said Pike was “on and off” her medication because “she was feeling kind of sick of them.”

A little more than a week before the shooting, an incident in the woods caused Pike to check herself into a mental hospital for three days and receive medication, Holder said.

But the family’s versions of the incident have been conflicting.

One of Holder’s family members previously told The Star a “tired and exhausted” Pike escaped to the woods with Destinii after an argument with Holder and being kicked out of a friend’s home. While Pike was sleeping on the ground, the relative said it was her understanding that she rolled over on top of Destinii and had to give her CPR before rushing her to the hospital.

Coombs said Holder told her that Pike tried to smother their child in the woods near the end of October.

But Holder told The Star that Pike fell asleep on their baby and woke up to an unconscious Destinii. Pike gave their baby chest compressions and called 911, Holder said.

Despite the stories of altercations and questionable mental health, Holder and Book both insisted Pike was a good mother. Holder said he has a child from a previous relationship that isn’t in his custody, but having a child with Pike helped him learn how to be a parent.

“I then started thinking ‘I could do this, I could be a father,’” Holder said.

“She told me she was determined to make sure that she would do anything and everything to keep Destinii beside her,” Book said. “She didn’t want to feel that trauma separation.”

Both Dwyer and Chicago-based psychologist Susan Benjamin Feingold, who examined the case at The Star’s request, believe that multiple agencies designed to help, including social services and police, in fact failed to help Pike and baby Destinii.

Feingold, who has been in practice for more than 30 years specializing in women’s reproductive health, believes the hospital should have given Pike a mental health evaluation after her confession of feeling depressed and self-harm at Destinii’s birth. It is unknown if that evaluation occurred.

“All of those were red flags that should have got some kind of mental health people involved … to assess her right off the bat,” Feingold said.

From details about Pike, Dwyer and Feingold both said she may have been suffering from perinatal depression and postpartum depression.

Book said her sister hated being put into a corner by people because of her traumatic childhood.

Book, Dwyer, and Feingold believe Pike’s traumatic background could have played a large role in her mental state. Police coming into her home, DSS’s involvement in Destinii’s life and constant check-ins from Coombs could have been triggers, they believe, which ultimately led to Pike grabbing the knife and lunging at police that day.

“If you don’t have a general understanding of how trauma and triggers can present in someone, especially someone who is newly postpartum, it can end really, really badly,” Dwyer said.

‘I’m traumatized’

Memories of Pike and baby Destinii are forever at the forefront of Holder and Book’s minds.

Both are angry at police, and are still trying to make sense of why the fatal shots were fired at their loved ones.

“I’m traumatized,” Holder said. “They are supposed to serve and protect. They are not supposed to just fire a weapon.”

Holder said he heard on an officer’s radio shortly before the shooting that a mental health respondent had arrived on the scene. Family members and experts said the mental health worker could have saved Pike’s and Destinii’s lives.

“I think it could have made a huge difference, literally, life or death in this situation,” Dwyer said.

“Why not transport her to a hospital and have her assessed?” Feingold asked.

Book said she last spoke to her twin sister a week before her death and she last saw her sister in person almost two years ago. She never got to meet her youngest niece before her death.

“We may not physically always be around each other but we always had the phone to hear each other’s voices,” Book said. “My brain and my spirit can’t comprehend not hearing her voice and seeing her.”

Independence police handed the investigation into the shooting over to a group of eastern Jackson County detectives called the Police Involved Investigative Team, or PIIT.

PIIT, which investigates police shootings and other use-of-force incidents, has sent the case to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office for review.

Three Independence officers involved that day are on administrative leave.

Family members have pleaded for the officers involved to be held accountable for the deaths of their loved ones. They also want police to release the full, unedited bodycam footage from that day.

“He should just be out here on the streets being homeless now,” Holder said about the officer who fired the shots.

Book insists that Pike was only violent if triggered.

“That’s not my sister. She doesn’t have the intent to kill. That’s why I want to see a couple seconds after they cut it off,” Book said of the footage.

The Star’s Laura Bauer and Ilana Arougheti contributed to this story.

This story was originally published February 25, 2025 at 6:00 AM.