Tarika Wilson, a 26-year-old African-American woman, was fatally shot on January 4, 2008, by Lima, Ohio, police officer Joseph Chavalia during a raid on her home. Wilson was unarmed and holding her one-year-old son when she was killed. The police were targeting her boyfriend, Anthony Terry, who was suspected of drug dealing. When the police broke down the front door and entered the house, Wilson sheltered in a bedroom with her six young children.
Officer Chavalia mistook the sound of his fellow officers' shots for hostile gunfire and fired blindly in the direction of the bedroom where Wilson and her children hid, killing her instantly and injuring her son.
The shooting sparked protests and debates about race relations in Lima, a city where one in four residents is black. Wilson's friends and family blamed police racism for her death, and the incident helped generate the Black Lives Matter movement during the next decade. In August 2008, an all-white jury acquitted Officer Chavalia of criminal charges. He returned to the force but was not permitted to go on patrol. Two years after the shooting, Wilson's family settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Lima for $2.5 million. Wilson's mother and sisters have raised Wilson's orphaned children in the years since her death.
The tragic death of Tarika Wilson highlighted issues of police brutality and racial inequality, and her case remains a poignant example of the challenges faced by minority communities in interactions with law enforcement.
