Family of mother and baby killed by Independence police get millions in settlement
The family of a mother and her baby who were killed by Independence police in November 2024 have received a settlement of nearly $6 million.
Notice of the court settlement came last month. But The Star didn’t receive the amount of money reached in the settlement until Monday, two weeks after it submitted a public records request to Independence.
Through attorney Tom Porto, family members of Maria Pike and her 2-month-old baby, Destinii, filed the suit last July against two police officers who were involved in the shooting. The suit alleged that the officers knew Pike was mentally ill and escalated events that day without waiting for a mental health professional who was called to the scene.
All parties in the suit agreed to waive a jury trial. A Jackson County judge signed off on the settlement May 15, according to online court records.
Tom and Lynne Pike, Maria’s parents, and Mitchell Holder, Destinii’s father, each received $2,945,000, according to the court settlement.
The amount, Porto said, ranks among the highest publicly reported settlements involving police shootings in the country.
But, he said in a news release, the settlement should only be the beginning.
“What good is one of the largest settlements in the history of this kind of work if there is no change?” Porto said.
Police shot mother, baby in Independence
On Nov. 7, 2024, Independence police were called to Oval Spring Apartments in Independence, where Holder lived with Pike and Destinii. Officers responded to a domestic dispute where Holder’s mother reported that Pike had hit her.
Holder spoke to police and told them he had refused to let his mother inside the apartment, but she came in “unlawfully” through a sliding glass door, the lawsuit said. Holder said he and Maria Pike asked his mother to leave and then physically forced her out of their apartment.
When Officers Jordan White and Chad Cox entered the third-floor apartment, body camera footage showed Pike standing in a closet, which was also Destinii’s nursery, holding the infant. Pike eventually moved to the bed.
The two officers tried to talk with Pike, who never let go of her daughter, before she reached with her right hand toward the nightstand for a concealed butcher knife.
Pike raised the knife over her head and moved toward officers. White, who spent 12 minutes with Pike, fired the four fatal shots, killing the mother and her baby.
“Officers ignored mental health-response protocols and turned a non-violent postpartum mental health call into a fatal confrontation,” the new release from Porto’s office said.
