Ta'Kiya Young

Ta'Kiya Young, 21, seven months pregnant with her third child, was shot and killed by Blendon Township, Ohio Police Officer Connor Grubb on August 24, 2023, in a Kroger parking lot after being accused of shoplifting alcohol. Body camera footage showed Grubb standing in front of Young's car as she slowly rolled it forward attempting to leave; he fired a single shot through the windshield, killing her and her unborn daughter. A Franklin County grand jury indicted Grubb on murder, felonious assault, and involuntary manslaughter charges in August 2024, a year after the shooting. On November 21, 2025, following a roughly two-week trial, a jury acquitted Grubb of all six charges after about 6.5 hours of deliberation, finding his use of force objectively reasonable given the moving vehicle. No one has ever been convicted in Young's death.

Blendon Township, OH · Franklin County

• 2023: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The shoplifting accusation, the parking lot confrontation, and the single fatal shot, per body camera footage played at trial and the Franklin County grand jury's charging documents.
• Grubb fired one shot through the windshield as Young's car rolled forward and made contact with him; the judge later dismissed four charges specifically tied to the death of Young's unborn daughter, ruling prosecutors had not proven Grubb knew she was pregnant.
• A Franklin County grand jury indicted Grubb in August 2024, a year after the shooting, on two counts each of murder, felonious assault, and involuntary manslaughter.
• At trial, the defense argued the slow-moving vehicle itself constituted deadly force, citing testimony from a use-of-force expert and an accident reconstructionist; prosecutors argued Young posed no threat justifying deadly force.
• A jury acquitted Grubb of all six charges on November 21, 2025, after about 6.5 hours of deliberation.
• Young's estate filed a civil lawsuit against Blendon Township and its police chief over department practices, which remains pending following the acquittal.

• Whether Young's slowly rolling vehicle in fact presented the kind of deadly threat that justified Grubb's single shot, as the jury ultimately concluded, or whether he had other options to avoid or step away from the vehicle, as prosecutors argued, was contested by dueling expert witnesses at trial and resolved only by the jury's verdict.
• Whether Grubb was aware of Young's pregnancy at the time he fired has never been established either way; the court found prosecutors did not prove that he was.
• The jury's specific reasoning across six separate charges and roughly 6.5 hours of deliberation is not public, as with all jury deliberations.

• AP News — “Officer acquitted in death of Ta'Kiya Young, a pregnant Black mother accused of shoplifting”
• Wikipedia — “Killing of Ta'Kiya Young” (sourced case history)
• The 19th / Capital B — “Ta'Kiya Young verdict: Officer found not guilty in killing of pregnant Black mother”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs