Horrible moment mother and her 2-month-old daughter are both shot dead by a police officer who attacked them with a knife

Disturbing body camera footage captured the moment the mother of a two-month-old baby charged at police officers, prompting one officer to pull a gun.

Maria Pike, 34, and her daughter, Destinii Hope, were fatally injured in the police-involved shooting in Independence, Missouri on November 7.

The incident reportedly began after Pike got into a physical altercation with Destinii’s paternal grandmother, Talisa Coombs, amid concerns about the baby’s well-being. according to the Kansas City Star.

Coombs claimed Pike threw things at her and pulled her hair, and even tried to push her down the stairs when she went to check on her grandchild that day.

She then called the Missouri Department for Social Services’ children’s unit and Independence Police, with family members claiming they thought Pike would simply be arrested and get the help she needed for postpartum depression. KCTV reports.

But body camera footage released Wednesday showed Independence officers approaching Coombs, visibly distraught, and her husband, Brian Coombs, outside a building at the Opal Springs Apartment around 1:45 p.m.

Police then determined that a domestic assault had occurred and received permission from the apartment manager to enter Pike’s home, where they found her with her child wedged in a closet.

Independence Police said they spoke with her for 11 minutes, only part of which was seen in the body camera footage released Wednesday, during which an officer asked her if she was OK and if she had been injured.

Maria Pike, 34, and her daughter, Destinii Hope, suffered fatal injuries during the police-involved shooting in Independence, Missouri on November 7

Pike only responded by shaking and nodding her head as she cradled her baby, but did not say anything at any point as she appeared on camera in the footage.

Independence police said they then tried to convince her to release her daughter, but she refused.

Instead, officers say, she walked past police and sat on a bed next to a nightstand, where a large knife lay.

In fact, in the video, Pike can be seen sitting on the bed with the baby’s father, Mitchell Holder, at the foot of the bed.

She could then be seen picking up the knife while still holding her baby and raising it above her head before charging at an officer.

The footage released Wednesday stops before shots were fired and it is unclear how many times the officer fired his gun.

All three officers who responded to the apartment that day are now on administrative leave amid a police incident team investigation into the shooting.

But family members are calling for justice.

CCTV footage released on Wednesday shows Pike holding her daughter in a closet

She then walked past police officers, sat on a bed and grabbed a large knife as she approached one of the officers

The video disappears before the officer fires any shots, and it is unclear how many shots were fired

‘I want accountability. I want responsibility with the officer,” Nina Book, Pike’s twin sister, told Fox 4 KC.

She said she and her sister would grow old together.

“I never thought a cop would take their lives,” Book said of the mother of three, whom she described as “very talented,” “smart and intelligent” and an “amazing” cook who “took pride in her Russian’. heritage.

“She loved all the children,” Book continued. “It didn’t matter if they were close to her or not. She lit up in the room with other people’s children. She was good with children.’

Book said during the last phone conversation she had with her sister, “she was very excited to tell me about her baby.

“She told me she believed God was giving her another chance to have a child. She did everything she could not to be separated from her child.’

But Pike suffered from severe postpartum depression, her family says, and in the moments after she gave birth to Destinii on August 22, she reportedly told hospital staff that she was homeless and that she “felt like she was hurting herself,” she said. Talisa Coombs at the hospital. Star.

Police said they repeatedly asked Pike to put the baby to sleep

Family members say Pike suffered from postpartum depression

She said staff then tried to get Pike and her daughter some help, with someone from the Children’s Department asking Holder if Pike and the baby could stay there.

Coombs noted that she also offered to let Pike and Destinii stay at her house, in an upstairs bedroom, but she declined.

So the grandmother said she eventually told a Children’s Department worker that she would go to the apartment and “check on Destinii as often as I could.”

She claimed that she visited her son’s apartment “about three times a day” with her granddaughters, who were only two and a half months old.

Coombs also said the Children’s Department ordered Pike and Holder — who reportedly suffers from dissociative identity disorder and collects disability checks — to attend therapy and counseling.

But when asked if they ever did, Coombs replied, “Not that I know of.”

She and her daughter lived with the baby’s father, Mitchell Holder, after Pike reportedly told hospital staff that she was homeless and concerned about her daughter’s well-being.

The grandmother further claimed that the couple’s social services were called again in late October when Pike allegedly tried to suffocate her child in the woods.

She said Destinii was taken to a local hospital and Pike admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation three days later.

When Destinii was later released from the hospital, Coombs said, a Children’s Department employee brought her back to Holder’s apartment and told Holder and Coombs — who were in the apartment at the time — that Pike could no longer be left alone with the baby.

“They didn’t ask me to take Destinii at all,” Coombs said.

“When they gave that baby to Mitchell, they didn’t give him any papers at all and said he was, you know, in temporary custody until a hearing or something.

“And usually they have to give you this paperwork that says, ‘This is the plan here and you have to follow this plan.’ They didn’t give him an inch [of] not a sheet of paper at all,” she claimed.

Hours before the police-involved shooting, the child’s grandmother said she was called to check on the baby’s condition. That’s when she and Pike got into an argument.

Coombs also alleged that the couple would repeatedly ignore calls from the Department of Social Services and all attempts to help them, at one point even cursing out a social worker.

Social services eventually requested that the couple and their child attend a meeting on November 6 – just one day before the fatal shooting. Coombs said one of the social workers she had been communicating with told her to accompany them to the meeting after they missed a meeting. previous.

When the couple subsequently refused to answer the department’s calls on the day of the meeting, Brian said the Children’s Department worker told them he and his wife would get custody of the baby.

“They said they would take the baby and give it to us to care for until Mitchell and Maria got help,” he told the Star.

The employee of the Children’s Department also allegedly asked the grandmother that day to check on the couple, because they were not answering the phone.

“They wouldn’t even open the door for me,” she said. ‘I knocked on the door and kept calling out the names. They didn’t open the door.’

A state worker then responded to the home, but their knocks also went unanswered, leading to police officers receiving the same treatment when called, she said.

The police eventually left that day, saying they could not act without a court order.

Talisa Coombs said she was asked to check on the baby’s well-being the day of the shooting

Coombs said the couple later called her and expressed their rejection of state intervention.

‘[Their] exact words they said to me and my husband [were] “I don’t want CPS in my life and I’m going to get rid of them if I have to call the police.”

The next day, just hours before the police-involved shooting, Coombs said she received a call from the Children’s Department worker, who asked her if she could check to see if Destinii was still alive — and that’s when Coombs said that Pike had attacked her.

“They should have done that themselves,” Brian argued. “If they thought that baby was in danger, that’s on them. They should have gone there.”

“If they had gone there and done their job, the outcome would have been different, I’m sure. Something like that wouldn’t have escalated.’