In tears, the mother of young Daunte Wright gave a poignant testimony during the trial of former policewoman Kim Potter on Thursday in Minneapolis. The ex-policewoman is on trial for manslaughter after killing 20-year-old African-American Daunte Wright with her service weapon in April. Katie Bryant, the mother of the young man killed, could not hold back her tears, during her testimony: “I wanted to comfort my baby, I wanted to hold him. And I wanted to protect him, because that’s what mothers do. We protect our children. We make sure they are safe, ”she said before adding that the day of her 20-year-old son’s death was“ the worst day of my life ”.
Former policewoman Kim Potter, 49, is on trial for manslaughter. On April 11, 2021, this veteran agent killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of this large city in the northern United States. The white policewoman believed she was using her electric Taser gun but had shot the young man down with a bullet fired from her service weapon. The drama had a strong impact because it had arisen during the trial of white policeman Derek Chauvin who, in May 2020 in Minneapolis, asphyxiated George Floyd, a black man of 46 years. The ordeal of the forty-something had provoked huge anti-racist demonstrations around the world. Almost a year later, the death of Daunte Wright had rekindled tensions in Minneapolis and protests peppered with violence had taken place several nights in a row. Kim Potter’s arrest brought calm, but the city remained on edge until Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
The facts are not disputed: Kim Potter and two colleagues had stopped the car of Daunte Wright for a banal traffic control. After realizing that he was subject to an arrest warrant for a weapons offense, they decided to arrest him. The young man, who was unarmed, had tried to flee. To dissuade him, Kim Potter had drawn what she thought was his electric pistol. On a recording of the scene, we hear him shout “Taser” several times, before firing. “She is not prosecuted for intentional homicide,” said prosecutor Erin Eldridge from the outset, but it is not “an unfortunate error” either: “This file relates to the reckless handling of a weapon, on the neglect of the risk ”by a policewoman with 26 years of experience, she asserted. The policewoman should be called to the witness stand in a few days. The verdict is expected by the end of the year.
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