COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Connor Grubb, the Blendon Township police officer who fatally shot Ta’Kiya Young in 2023, has been found not guilty of murder and all other charges brought against him.
On Friday morning, Grubb, 31, was acquitted of two counts of murder, two counts of felonious assault and two counts of involuntary manslaughter in relation to the death of Ta’Kiya Young, 21.
The jury delivered the verdict in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas after deliberating for just under seven hours, following an approximately two-and-a-half week trial.
“It never brings pleasure to a prosecutor to be prosecuting a police officer for criminal charges but that’s how our system works and that’s our job as special prosecutors was to essentially to come in here and make sure the jury got the full presentation of the facts,” said prosecutor Daniel Brandt.
After Judge David Young (who is not related to Ta’Kiya Young) read the verdict, Ta’Kiya Young’s grandmother broke down and yelled “it’s not right.”
She was escorted out of the courtroom by those who were with her.
“You look at these recent police killings in Columbus, and you have officers who have an unreasonable, an irrational fear with no weapons involved for folks doing very minimal behavior that the escalate into a murder,” said Sean Walton, an attorney representing the Young family. “It’s not normal behavior.”
Defense attorney Mark Collins said Grubb did not testify because prosecutors had already entered his statement to investigators into the record, but added that the trial has been a struggle for him.
Grubb did not make any public comments after the trial.
“He took a life on duty and realized another life after the fact,” Collins said. “To walk around with that is a difficult situation.”
Use of force trials for police officers use a different standard than the typical murder trial.
Jurors did not have to decide if Grubb killed Ta’Kiya Young, but rather if Grubb’s use of force was “objectively reasonable” based on what he knew at the time, without the benefit of hindsight.
Before the Aug. 24, 2023, shooting, Ta’Kiya Young was captured on camera at the Kroger on South Sunbury Road stealing multiple bottles of liquor and leaving the building.
A Kroger employee flagged down Grubb and another officer, both of whom happened to be in the parking lot helping someone get into a locked car, and told them Ta’Kiya Young had stolen alcohol from the store.
The officers approached Ta’Kiya Young’s car, with Grubb standing in front of the vehicle while the second officer stood by the driver’s side door. The officers repeatedly ordered her to exit the car.
Instead, Ta’Kiya Young began to pull forward, resulting in her car coming into contact with Grubb, whose feet were briefly lifted off the ground. At the same time, he fired one fatal shot into the car.
At the trial, the prosecution argued that Grubb’s use of force was “completely unnecessary,” as Ta’Kiya Young used her right turn signal and began to slowly drive her vehicle away from Grubb.
The defense maintained Grubb was justified, since Ta’Kiya Young had her “foot on the trigger” of a deadly weapon – a 3,500-pound car.
Montgomery County prosecutors Brandt, Erin Claypoole and Richard Glennon were responsible for convincing the jury that Grubb’s use of force was unreasonable, while attorneys Kaitlyn Stephens and Collins defended Grubb.
