How Missouri social services failed Maria Pike Independence mother and her two month old daughter, Destinii Hope who were killed in a police shooting after the mother in the grips of mental health woes lunged at police officers, only to be shot, as released bodycam video shows.
Missouri police have released body cam video showing the moment an Independence mother of a two month old lunging at police officers, prompting one cop to pull a gun and shoot, killing the woman and her newborn.
Maria Pike, 34, and her daughter, Destinii Hope, were fatally shot in the incident which took place on November 7.
The shooting has led to questions whether the tragedy could’ve been averted had the mother and father, both suffering mental health issues, had their daughter taken away by social services while the parents got treatment. Treatment the parents repeatedly refused and who nevertheless continued to have custody of the newborn, despite claims Maria Pike at one point attempting to smother her newborn.
Independence mom suffering from postpartum depression
The incident reportedly began after Pike got into a physical altercation with Destinii’s paternal grandmother, Talisa Coombs, amid concerns about the baby’s welfare, according to the Kansas City Star.
Coombs claimed Pike threw things at her and pulled her hair, including attempting to push her down stairs when she went to go check on her grandchild that day.
She then called the Children’s Division of the Missouri Department for Social Services and the Independence police, with family members saying they thought Pike would just be arrested and given the help she needed for postpartum depression they believed her to be suffering from, KCTV reported.
Body camera footage released on Wednesday showed Independence officers approaching Coombs, looking visibly distraught, and her husband, Brian Coombs, outside a building at the Opal Springs Apartment at around 1.45pm.
Police then determined that a domestic assault had taken place, and got permission from the apartment manager to enter Pike’s home, where they found her clutching her infant inside a closet.
Independence mom feared having her baby taken away
Independence police said they spoke with her for 11 minutes, only part of which was shown in the body camera footage released Wednesday, in which an officer asked her if she is OK or whether she had been hurt.
Pike only responded by shaking and nodding her head as she rocked her baby, but did not say anything at any point when she is 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 the cops to sit on a bed next to a nightstand, where there was a large knife.
Video shows Pike sitting on the bed with the baby’s dad, Mitchell Holder, at the foot of the bed.
Pike is then seen picking up the knife while still clutching her baby and raising it over her head before charging at an officer.
The footage released Wednesday stops before any shots were fired and it is unclear how many times the officer fired his gun.
How social services failed a mother and her newborn daughter
All three of the officers who responded to the apartment that day are now on administrative leave amid a Police-Involved Incident Team investigation into the shooting.
The shooting has led to family members demanding justice.
‘I want accountability. I want responsibility on the cop,’ Nina Book, Pike’s twin sister, told Fox 4 KC.
‘I never thought a cop would take their lives,’ Book said of the mother-of-three.
According to Pike’s relatives, the mom who had only given birth to Destinii on August 22, was suffering from severe postpartum depression. During childbirth, Pike had told hospital staff that she was homeless and had ‘felt like hurting herself.’
Staff tried to get Pike and her daughter help, with someone from the Children’s Division asking Holder whether Pike and the baby could stay there.
Talisa Coombs noted that she also offered to let Pike and Destinii stay at her house, in an upstairs bedroom, but she didn’t want to.
So the grandma said she ultimately told a Children’s Division worker she would go to the apartment and ‘check up on Destinii as many times as I can.’
She claimed that in her granddaughters just two-and-a-half months of life, she visited her son’s apartment ‘like three times a day.’
Coombs also said the Children’s Division ordered Pike and Holder – who is reportedly living with dissociative identity disorder and is collecting disability checks – to go to therapy and counseling.
But when asked whether they ever did, Coombs replied, ‘not that I know of.’
The grandmother said social services was called on the couple again at the end of October, when Pike allegedly tried to smother her child in the woods.
She said Destinii was taken to a local hospital, and Pike checked herself into a mental hospital for an evaluation three days later.
When Destinii was later released from the hospital, Coombs said, a Children’s Division employee brought her back to Holder’s apartment and told Holder and Coombs – who was at the apartment at the time – that Pike could no longer be left alone with the baby.
‘They did not ask me to take Destinii at all,’ Coombs recounted.
Coombs also claimed that the couple would repeatedly ignore the Department of Social Services phone calls and any attempts to help them.
Social Services eventually requested the couple and their child attend a meeting on November 6 – just one day before the fatal shooting.
When the couple then refused to answer calls from the department on the day of the meeting, Brian said the Children’s Division worker told them he and his wife would get custody of the baby.
‘They said they were going to take that baby and give it to us to take care of until Mitchell and Maria got some help,’ he told the Star.
Coombs said the couple later told them that they didn’t want CPS in their lives.
The following day, just hours before the police-involved shooting, Coombs said she received a call from the Children’s Division employee, who asked her if she could check whether Destinii was still alive – which is when Coombs said Pike attacked her.
‘They should have done that themselves,’ Brian argued. ‘If they thought that baby was in danger, that’s their job. They should have went up there.’
‘If they would have went over there, done their job, the outcome would have been different, I know it would have. It wouldn’t have escalated to this.’
