REACTION: No charges for fatal police shooting of mother, infant

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (KCTV) - An Independence Police officer who shot and killed a mother and her infant will not face criminal charges.

Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney Melesa Johnson announced her decision at 5 p.m. on Friday after meeting with loved ones of Maria Pike and her baby, Destinii Hope. With her announcement, she included a 16-page letter detailing the facts and legal boundaries she considered in deciding not to file criminal charges.

Carrie Lufkin, the apartment manager, has been emotionally invested from the start. She saw how the aftermath affected Destinii’s loved ones and other tenants. She arranged a vigil to try to bring comfort, especially for the many children living there. She responded to the prosecutor’s decision with uncertainty.

“I don’t know how I feel really, right I’m kind of in shock because I just found out. But I’ve had these feelings for a long time,” Lufkin said.

She’s been thinking ever since that day whether the officer should go to jail, wondering who is to blame.

“I think there were a lot of wrongs that led up to it,” Lufkin said.

THE PROSECUTOR’S REASONING

In the 16-page letter accompanying her decision, Johnson described the domestic assault call that brought police to the Oval Springs Apartments on Nov. 7, 2024. Destinii’s paternal grandmother said she went to the apartment to verify that a Children’s Division safety plan for Destinii was being followed when Maria attacked her.

She described the two officers finding Maria holding Destinii in her arms in a “nursery-like area” inside the bedroom’s 5-1/2 foot long closet.

She described how the officers were positioned when Maria, while still holding Destinii in her arms, grabbed a previously concealed butcher knife from the nightstand. She said one officer was able to back away towards a hall when she pointed the knife at him. She said the officer who fired was boxed in with his back to the closet.

She reported that the officer fired four shots, hitting Maria in the wrist, neck, torso and back and hitting Destinii in the head.

READ MORE: Prosecutor will not file charges against officer in fatal shooting of woman, infant

“We did not arrive at this decision lightly. The loss of a young mother and her infant are devastating and tragic,” Johnson said in a statement. “However, as prosecutors, we are bound by an oath to apply the law and analyze facts without being guided by the sympathy we feel for all those impacted. Our purpose is to determine if what was done was reasonable, defined by Missouri law, and not whether it was the best course of action.”

‘A PROFOUND FAILURE OF OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM’

The Kansas City Law Enforcement Accountability Project (KC LEAP) released a written statement on the prosecutor’s decision, saying they are “dissatisfied.”

The organization said they reviewed the full body cam footage with the family.

“This outcome is not only a profound failure of our justice system—it is a failure of our collective responsibility to protect and honor every member of our community, including those with mental health issues and disabilities,” they wrote.

They also raised questions about Maria being shot in the back.

“It is unclear whether Maria still had the knife in her hand when she was shot and had an entrance wound in her back, according to the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s report,” the KC LEAP statement continued. “Those facts, in concert with the behavior of the officer who chose not to wait for the Crisis Intervention Team warrant the decision of a court; and our outrage.”

‘I WISH IT JUST NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED’

Lufkin agrees about some of those failures. She often thinks about all the things that could have been done differently in the moments before police even entered the apartment that day.

“This baby was in harm’s way. DFS knew it,” she said, referring to the Children’s Division, previously known as the Division of Family Services. “They should have got that baby out of harm’s way before this situation ever came to place.”

She’s thought about baby Destinii’s family and that if she was in their shoes, she’d want accountability. She also thinks about the officer.

“I wish that it would have been handled differently, and I know that he probably had a family to go home to as well,” she said. “And when you have someone lunging at you with a knife, who knows what’s going through your mind?”

She wonders about the officer’s training and if different rules about response when someone is in a mental health crisis could have made a difference.

“The whole thing’s so sad to me. I just really wish it would’ve never happened,” she said, “and I really wish that people would’ve taken the correct steps before it ended that way.”

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