More than 100 protesters gathered in Columbus, Ohio, to demonstrate against the fatal police shooting of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, who charged at two people with a knife before she was shot.
At least 150 demonstrators chanted Bryant’s age outside the Columbus police headquarters, where they assembled for the second night in a row on Wednesday, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
“She was a child!” the group shouted, the outlet reported.
Around 9 p.m., protesters began marching through downtown and were joined by others in honking cars, some of whose occupants raised fists and held cardboard signs out their windows, the outlet reported.
Earlier in the day, more than 500 Ohio State University students held a sit-in outside of the Ohio Union, where activists called for the abolition of the police.
They then marched to the Ohio Statehouse and called on university officials to cut ties to the police force, the outlet reported.
Ohio State students gather on High Street to protest the police shooting that killed Ma’Khia Bryant and call on the university to cut its ties with the Columbus Police Department. Kyle Robertson/The Columbus Dispatch via AP“It’s been 11 months and multiple black people killed in this city and still no response from Ohio State,” one student said into a megaphone, the newspaper reported.
The protests come after Bryant, a black teen in foster care, was fatally shot by police after her family said she called police to report girls fighting on Tuesday afternoon.
Body camera footage released Wednesday showed a knife-wielding Bryant run towards two people before an officer fired four shots.
The officer, who has been identified in a report as Nicholas Reardon, has been placed on paid leave.
