MSNBC’s Joy Reid has argued that something must have ‘scared’ 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant before she lunged at another woman with a knife and was shot dead by a cop.
Police were called to a chaotic scene at the foster home in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday, and police officer Nicholas Reardon opened fire on Ma’Khia when she launched her knife attack.
The events that took place before police arrived remain uncertain, but Ma’Khia’s foster mother Angela Moore has said the teen had argued with two of her former foster children over an untidy bed.
During her broadcast of ‘The ReidOut’ on MSNBC on Thursday, Joy made an argument defending Bryant’s actions before the shooting.
‘We don’t know the details of what happened beforehand but I’m bothered that no one is asking what could’ve scared a 16-year-old girl enough that she felt that she had to grab a kitchen knife facing two adult women,’ Reid said.
‘No one’s asking what would’ve scared a kid who’s in a foster situation so much that she felt that she needed to defend herself or pick up a knife,’ she added.
Joy Reid drew criticism for comments made about the Ma’Khia Bryant shooting
Reid also took aim at people who have said the officer was protecting the other girls involved in the altercation when he opened fire on knife-wielding Ma’Khia.
‘No one’s asking that about her, they’re just saying – people with this sort of concern trolling – pretending they care so much about those other two women,’ Reid said.
‘Do we really think these people are so concerned about those other two black women?’
Her comments drew a backlash from some on Twitter.
One wrote: ‘911 operators, take note. Ask if it’s a knife fight first, then do not dispatch police. Send Joy Reid.’
Conservative Curtis Houck said ‘Joy Reid claims anyone defending the officer that shot #MaKiyahBryant is more concerned about the white officer and don’t actually care about the lives of the other girls b/c – you guessed it – they’re black’
One user asked, ‘Joy a black girl was saved doesn’t that life matter to you?’
She said the fight over the housework started before she had arrived home from work.
‘It was over keeping the house clean,’ Moore, who was taking care of Bryant, said.
‘The older one told them to clean up the house because “Mom doesn’t like the house dirty.” So that’s how it all started.’
Moore said she was told that Ma’Khia had told the older girl: ‘You’re not the guardian of me.’
Moore said the girls argued ‘all the time’ since Ma’Khia moved into the home a few months ago and she was told by one of those involved in the brawl how it broke out.
‘I never thought it would escalate like that,’ Moore said.
The City of Columbus previously released body camera footage showing the incident
The footage appears to show Bryant lunging at a woman with what appeared to be a knife
The police officer, Nicholas Reardon, fired his weapon, resulting in Bryant’s death
She received a frantic phone call from one of the former foster children who is seen in the fateful police bodycam video wearing pink as Ma’Khia lunged at her with a knife before being gunned down by Reardon.
Moore said the young girl in pink told her: ‘”Mom, get home. Where are you? They’re going crazy.” She said they shot Ma’Kiah and I said, “Huh?” It was just crazy.’
The foster mother started to pray and received text messages from people sending their condolences before she had even arrived home to find the teenager dead.
Moore paid tribute to Ma’Khia as a ‘fun’ girl who loved to dance and help around the house, while her birth mother Paula said she loved music, cooking and making TikTok videos.
The revelations come after one of her neighbors, a military veteran, said his home security camera proves the Columbus Police officer had no choice but to shoot the teenager because more people could have been killed.
Donavon Brinson told Fox News Thursday morning he believes Bryant could have fatally stabbed the young woman she was seen lunging at with a knife if the cop hadn’t opened fire.
‘He could have either not fired and the young lady in pink could have been stabbed in the neck and brutally or fatally injured and then he could have shot [Bryant] and we could have had two [young women] dead – or he could have responded in the way that he did and one young lady lost her life,’ he said.
Another angle from across the street showed the fight that led to the fatal shooting
A second neighbor also said he believes police bodycam footage shows Bryant was in ‘full attack mode’ and ‘needed to be stopped’ because a ‘young lady’s life was at stake’.
Reardon shot Bryant four times at around 4.45pm on Tuesday on the 3100 block of Legion Lane while responding to a 911 call about an attempted stabbing.
Footage from a security camera on the garage of Brinson’s home across the street from the foster home captured a new angle of the shooting, giving a glimpse into the moments leading up to the fatal incident.
The 26-second video shows a girl – now known to be Bryant – walking down a driveway toward other people at the very same moment that a police car pulls up outside the home.
Ma’Khia Bryant, who was just 16 years old, is pictured in two undated selfies
Bryant (left) was a foster child in the care of Franklin County
Pictured: Nicholas Reardon, the officer who fired the fatal shots
Bryant then appears to suddenly charge at another person in the driveway. What happened next was captured on police body camera footage released Wednesday.
The police officer is seen taking a few steps toward a group of people in the driveway when Bryant starts swinging a knife wildly at another girl or woman, who falls backward.
The officer shouts several times to get down. Bryant then charges at another girl or woman, who is pinned against a car.
From a few feet away, with people on either side of him, the officer fires four shots, and Bryant slumps to the ground. A black-handled blade similar to a kitchen knife or steak knife lies on the sidewalk next to her.
A man immediately yells at the officer: ‘You didn’t have to shoot her! She’s just a kid, man!’
The officer responds: ‘She had a knife. She just went at her.’
Bryant enrolled at Independence High School in February. She was a foster child in the care of Franklin County.
Nicholas Reardon, the officer who fired the fatal shots, is currently not on street duty, pending the results of an investigation into the shooting.
Joy Reid is no stranger to making controversial statements on her show.
In March, she tweeted, ‘I’ll say it again: people on the right would trade all the tax cuts for the ability to openly say the n-word like in ‘the good old days.”
‘To them, not being able to be openly racist and discriminatory without consequence is oppression. Trump is the avatar for this ‘freedom.”
Reid’s tweet came the same day she said on her show that states like Texas and Mississippi only want black people to get vaccines because white people want black people to ‘get their behinds into the factory and make me my steaks.’
In 2018, old tweets posted by Reid years earlier about ‘rentboys’ and ‘grimey closet-cases’ resurfaced days after the MSNBC host tried to deny writing homophobic blog comments appearing under her name.
She claimed she’d been hacked after images from her blog, titled The Reid Report, were tweeted out.
In one tweet, Reid referred to Southern Baptist minister George Rekers, who was famously caught with a male prostitute, as a ‘rentboy.’
MSNBC host Joy Reid sparked outrage this week when she tweeted that conservatives would trade tax cuts to use the n-word
‘George ‘Rentboy’ Rekers resigns is still not gay,’ Reid tweeted.
In another tweet, Reid said: ‘Rush Limbaugh’s fourth marriage offers a hopeful message for fat, grimey closet-cases everywhere. Get rich. (Karl Rover, you’re on deck!).’
She also added: ‘Report: Elton John, Who Is Gay, To Perform At Rush Limbaugh’s Wedding. Elton to serenade the beard.’
Reid said the anti-gay references ‘run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology’ and had been included in the now-defunct blog in an ‘effort to taint my character.’
