Detroit Woman Shot Dead After Crashing Car, Seeking Help

A Detroit woman was shot and killed after trying to find help from a nearby resident following an early morning car crash. 19-year-old Renisha McBride was found with fatal head wounds Saturday morning by a nearby resident who says her body was “dumped.” Police say McBride was allegedly shot because the resident believed she was an intruder.

As RT reports, the young Detroit woman was seeking help because her cell phone battery had died. Walking to a nearby home hoping to appeal to a resident, McBride was instead shot with a shotgun in the back of the head while stepping off the porch of a Dearborn Heights home after knocking on the front door. She died immediately, at 2:30 am Saturday.

Speaking to local media McBride’s aunt, Bernita Spinks, says the shooting was not justified. Even if the resident believed she was attempting to breaks in, “he should have called 911.”

“He shot her in the head, for what? For knocking on his door,” Spinks says. She believes race played a factor in her niece’s death, reports Raw Story. Her unfortunate crash in the predominately white Dearborn Heights area, as a black woman, led to her being racially profiled, Spinks believes. She says that McBride “didn’t break a window…. What, you see somebody on your porch and you just start shooting? And you say it was accidental? That wasn’t accidental.”

Police say they are now seeking charges against the Dearborn Heights resident who killed McBride, despite claims that it was an act of self-defense. Early autopsy results have confirmed that the Detroit woman was killed after a shotgun discharge to her head.

Spinks says her 19-year-old niece had just started a new job at Ford Motor Co. She and other family members say they are fully behind police action against the resident accused of unjustly firing upon and killing Detroit woman Renisha McBride Saturday morning.

[Image via WJBK, Background via ShutterStock]