Bodycam video from Independence police shooting shows mother approach officers with knife
In a surprise video “news briefing” Wednesday, Independence police shared edited portions of body camera footage from a recent police shooting that left a mother and baby dead.
That footage of the Nov. 7 shooting showed the mother, Maria Pike, 34, moving toward officers with a large kitchen knife raised above her head. Maria’s 2-month-old baby, Destinii Hope, was still under her left arm as she brandished the knife. The video ends before the officer fired the fatal shots.
Police shared the footage — with text accompanying it — after nearly three weeks of remaining tight-lipped about the shooting. Officials did not offer an explanation about why they shared it when they did, and did not announce the “critical incident briefing” until 75 minutes before it was scheduled to begin on the day before Thanksgiving.
The video briefing was posted to their Facebook account and emailed to local news outlets.
The footage shows only four minutes of what transpired that afternoon before Pike and Destinii were fatally shot. The edited footage did not include the full exchange between Pike and the officers, the interaction immediately leading up to Pike raising the knife or the actual shots that killed Pike and her daughter Destinii.
“She retrieved the concealed large kitchen-style knife and charged at officers, while still holding the child,” text accompanying the video footage said. “As a result, one officer fired at the female and both she and the infant sustained fatal injuries.”
It is not clear how the knife was concealed. A police spokesman did not answer any follow-up questions from The Star, including one about why the knife was described as concealed.
“As it says in the release, IPD will have no further comment until the conclusion of the investigation,” Officer Bryan Conley said.
Independence police are not investigating the deadly shooting. Shortly after the incident, the case was handed over to the Police Involved Investigative Team, or PIIT — a group of eastern Jackson County detectives called in to investigate police shooting and use-of-force incidents. As that shooting investigation continues, three Independence officers involved that day are on administrative leave.
On the department’s Facebook post about the briefing, Independence police said they wouldn’t be commenting further until the conclusion of the PIIT investigation.
“The Independence Police Department has been and will continue to be as transparent as legally permitted,” the statement said. “IPD fully understands the demand surrounding the events of that day and we will continue to fully cooperate with the outside investigation being conducted.”
In the nearly three weeks since the shooting, Independence police have refused to answer questions or provide details about that day, when Destinii’s paternal grandmother, Talisa Coombs, called them to the apartment saying she was assaulted.
They’ve refused to confirm that police bullets killed the mother and daughter, and have only said that one police officer fired at least one shot during the incident at the Oval Spring Apartments.
When police entered, relatives said that Pike had sequestered herself in a closet, holding the infant. The video released by police does show mother and baby in the closet, although it’s unclear how long they were there and there is no clear indication that Pike was being uncooperative.
While police have remained relatively tight-lipped on the details of the shooting, IPD’s narrative that has been released about what happened has at times diverged from the way relatives describe the shooting.
Police previously alleged that Pike was armed with a knife while officers were in the apartment, as shown in the video. Coombs, though, said she didn’t see one when she was in the apartment just before the shooting.
Coombs did not immediately respond to a call for comment Wednesday afternoon.
She and other relatives have questioned why officers used lethal force while Pike was holding her infant daughter.
For those calling for police accountability and reform in Independence and beyond, officers’ decision to respond to Pike’s knife with lethal force was “unsurprising.”
“We have seen police de-escalate people coming at them with machetes and all kinds of life ending options such as this woman did, but they were able to subdue the event without killing the victim,” Sheryl Ferguson, founder of police accountability activism organization Time 4 Justice, said Wednesday.
“I’m sure that a stun gun could have stopped her just as well as a bullet and it would have kept the baby an opportunity to still be in the land of the living.”
Tom Porto, attorney for Destinii’s father, said Pike was “clearly undergoing an unfortunate mental health crisis at the time she and her 2-month-old daughter were killed.”
“Questions need to be asked what tactics, short of the use of deadly force, could have been used to have saved these lives and mitigated this difficult situation,” Porto said.
In the video briefing, police said in their text that officers attempted to de-escalate the situation.
“Officers tried multiple times to convince the female to release the infant,” police said in the text released with the video footage Wednesday. “The repeated attempts failed, and she exited the closet, walked past the officers and sat on the bed next to the nightstand.
“This was not at the direction of officers who attempted to have her remain where she was.”
‘Are you hurt?’
The edited video released Wednesday only shows portions of what happened during the 20 minutes between Independence police officers arriving at the Oval Spring Apartments and Pike revealing her weapon.
At the start of Wednesday’s video, at least one officer is shown approaching the apartment tower where Pike lived with the baby’s father, Mitchell Holder, around 1:55 p.m. and speaking to Coombs, who sits outside on the curb.
“I called my son and asked him if it’s OK for me to come up here to see my granddaughter,” Coombs is heard saying.
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 open bedroom closet where she was holding Destinii, the department wrote in the video released Wednesday.
“Did you do something illegal?” one of the officers can be heard asking Holder, who responds, “No.”
Upon entering Holder and Pike’s bedroom, officers say they spoke with Pike for upwards of 11 minutes, the department wrote in the video Wednesday. In a 39-second clip captured at 2:05, both Holder and the officer can be heard asking Pike to leave the closet while she silently rocks Destinii in her arms.
In the same clip, Pike can be seen nodding when an officer asks “Are you OK?” and shaking her head when an officer asks “Are you hurt?”
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.
Relatives question police protocol
Prior to the surprise footage release, the only details about what unfolded in that apartment have come from the baby’s family and apartment managers who witnessed the tragedy, raising questions about both what happened and the lack of transparency around it.
The heavy edit applied to Wednesday’s released footage makes it difficult to assess whether IPD’s use of lethal force against Pike was justified, even if she was armed with a knife, said Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project.
“What happened on the footage that IPD did not include in the video is incredibly important for evaluating the reasonableness of the officers’ actions,” Bonds said.
“There is just no way to know if this was an appropriate police response without seeing the rest of the footage.”
Baby Destinii’s aunts, Felisha Holder and Ashley Greenfield, previously said that after the shooting, the Independence Police Department did not contact relatives for at least 10 days. The Holder family has retained an attorney and is seeking to review full body camera footage from the day of the shooting.
The Kansas City Law Enforcement Accountability Project, an organization that monitors law enforcement agencies, criticized the department Wednesday for releasing partial body camera footage directly to the public on the day before Thanksgiving, referring to the edited version released by IPD as “gaslighting.”
“We are again reminded of the complete lack of respect for victims of police violence, for those suffering from mental health issues, and for the cruel and inhumane treatment shown to certain members of our community,” KC LEAP wrote in a statement Wednesday.
Holder, like Coombs, has questioned why officers opted for lethal force rather than first attempting to subdue Pike with a Taser.
“They say that it was protocol,” Felisha Holder previously said. “I don’t believe that.”
Police ended the briefing with one last slide of text.
“Any time there is a loss of life, it is a tragic outcome,” the Police Department said on the video. “This tragedy weighs heavy on the hearts and minds of the men and women of the Independence Police Department.
“We remain committed to serving the citizens of Independence and ask our community for continued patience while this investigation continues.”
The Star’s Glenn E. Rice and PJ Green contributed to this report.
This story was originally published November 27, 2024 at 5:01 PM.
