The estate of a woman who died, along with her unborn child, after a Blendon Township police officer shot her has filed a federal lawsuit against the township and its chief of police.
Attorneys for the estate of 21-year-old Ta’Kiya Young filed the lawsuit on Sept. 23 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Young, who was about 25 weeks pregnant, died on Aug. 24, 2023, after being shot by Blendon Township officer Connor Grubb. Her unborn daughter also died.
The lawsuit accuses Blendon Township and Chief John Belford of depriving Young and her unborn child of their civil rights, resulting in their deaths.
Officer Connor Grubb, who fired the single shot that killed Young, is charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and felonious assault. His trial is currently scheduled for November.
The lawsuit is separate from one filed in Young’s estate in August in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, naming Grubb, Kroger, and an unnamed Kroger employee as defendants. Court records show Grubb and Kroger have not filed written responses to the lawsuit as of Sept. 24.
The same attorneys, Sean Walton, Robert Gresham and Anthony Pierson, filed both the state and federal lawsuits.
According to the Sept. 23 federal lawsuit, Grubb had a history of complaints against him, which should have resulted in his firing before the shooting.
The lawsuit documents a June 2023 complaint, two months before Young was shot in August of that year, as well as several undated allegations. Grubb’s personnel file, provided to The Dispatch by Blendon Township in June 2025, shows that one of the undated allegations stemmed from a 2022 complaint that an investigation determined to be unfounded.
Grubb’s personnel file has no documentation of any of the other complaints or allegations noted in the lawsuit, according to records provided to The Dispatch.
“Grubb’s conduct is a result of a broader custom of tolerating excessive or disproportionate force within the department in violation of department policy,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also says Blendon Township and Belford handled the aftermath of Young’s shooting with “weak oversight.”
“Apparent failure or delayed internal review and reliance on outside investigations reflects a lack of internal accountability,” the lawsuit says.
Blendon Township has said it will not conduct an internal review of Grubb’s conduct as a police officer until the criminal process is over. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation led the investigation into the shooting. Grubb is being prosecuted by special prosecutors from the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s office.
Grubb is currently on unpaid leave from the police department. The township did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What happened on Aug. 24, 2023?
On the day of the shooting, a Kroger employee flagged down a Blendon Township officer in the store’s parking lot who was assisting in an unrelated situation. The employee, according to video released by the township, told the officer a woman had stolen liquor and pointed at Young’s vehicle.
The officer approached Young’s driver’s side window, as she was already seated inside the car with the engine running, and asked her to turn off the car and roll down her window. Body camera footage shows Young did not, at which point Grubb is seen standing in front of Young’s vehicle.
Body camera footage shows Young turning the steering wheel of the car. Redacted portions of footage show the car moving forward, hitting Grubb, who fired a single shot that went through the car’s windshield, hitting Young in the chest.
Young’s vehicle continued to move forward before hitting the curb and then the exterior of the store, as shown in body camera footage. Grubb and the other officer immediately ran to the car and broke the driver’s side window so they could pull Young out and begin performing first aid.
Footage from the store from the parking lot shows both of Grubb’s feet being off the ground at the time the single shot was fired.
Young was taken to a nearby hospital, but she and her unborn child both succumbed to her injuries.
Video from the store, released by the township, shows Young and at least two other women taking multiple bottles of liquor from the store and not paying for them. The store employee followed the women into the parking lot, the footage shows, with two of the women getting into a separate car further from the store’s entrance than Young’s.
Body camera footage shows several bottles of liquor were inside Young’s car after the shooting, and can be heardbumping against each other as officers worked to pull Young out of the vehicle.
Young had two other children who were not with her at the time of the shooting.
Reporter Bethany Bruner can be reached at bbruner@gannett.com or on Bluesky at @bethanybruner.dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Estate of pregnant woman killed by police files federal lawsuit against Blendon Township
Reporting by Bethany Bruner, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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