Officer who shot Ma’Khia Bryant identified

The officer who fatally shot Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, on Tuesday evening in Columbus, Ohio has been identified as officer Nicholas Reardon.

Reardon was hired to work at the Columbus Division of Police in 2019, local station WBNS reports.

Bryant was shot after police were called regarding an attempted stabbing on Tuesday evening.

Body camera footage released on Wednesday shows an officer, believed to Reardon, approaching an altercation in which Bryant was involved. Soon after asking what was going on, the officer takes out his handgun and fires off four shots when it appears Bryant lunges at another girl.

“She had a knife. She just went at her,” the officer is heard saying.

“She’s a f—ing kid man,” a witness yells back.

No other people are believed to have been injured in the incident.

“This afternoon a young woman tragically lost her life. We do not know all of the details. There is body-worn camera footage of the incident. We are working to review it as soon as possible. [The Bureau of Criminal Investigation] is on the scene conducting an independent investigation … as they do with all CPD-involved shootings,” Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther (D) said on Tuesday.

Bryant’s death came shortly before the guilty verdict of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was announced.