According to the city's police chief, the fatal police shooting of a 20-year-old Black man in a Minneapolis suburb appeared to be an "accidental discharge" by an officer who drew her pistol instead of her Taser during a struggle during a traffic stop.
The shooting of Daunte Wright on Sunday sparked protests in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, with police using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse enraged demonstrators who remained on the streets well into Monday morning.
The attempted arrest of Wright, who police claim was stopped because his car registration had expired, happened not far from the courtroom where Derek Chauvin, a former white Minneapolis cop accused of murdering George Floyd, is on trial.
Officers ran a search on Wright and discovered an outstanding warrant for him, according to Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon, who said at a news conference on Monday that the routine traffic stop turned deadly.
At the meeting, video footage showed an officer attempting to handcuff Wright next to the car until he broke free and returned inside. "Taser, Taser, Taser," shouts a second officer whose body camera is being watched, before firing a single shot from her pistol at the bottom of the video.
As the car speeds away, the policewoman can be heard yelling, "Holy fuck, I just shot him!"
"From what I saw and the officers' reaction and concern immediately thereafter, it seems to me that this was an accidental discharge that resulted in Mr. Wright's tragic death," Gannon said, adding that the investigation was still in its early stages and based on facts reviewed by the police.
Mayor Mike Elliott of Brooklyn Center believes the cop, who has been put on administrative leave and has not been named, should be fired.
The shooting "couldn't have happened at a worse time," according to Elliot, with Chauvin's trial forcing a new reckoning with Floyd's murder, which sparked national demonstrations over racism and police violence last year.
According to White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, President Joe Biden was scheduled to talk briefly about Wright's death later Monday. Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, has called a press conference for 2 p.m. CDT (1800 GMT) to discuss the incident.
Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer who helped the Floyd family secure a $27 million court settlement, said he is now representing the Wrights.
"Daunte Wright is another young Black man murdered by those who have vowed to defend and serve all of us, not just the whitest of us," Crump said in a statement. "As Minneapolis and the rest of the country mourn the tragic death of George Floyd, we must now mourn the loss of this young man and father."
Wright's mother, Katie Wright, told reporters on Sunday that her son called her on Sunday afternoon to say that police had pulled him over for having air fresheners hanging from his rear-view mirror, which is illegal in Minnesota. She said she could hear police telling her son to exit the car.
When police pulled Wright over for an expired license plate, "a hanging object from the rear-view mirror" was found, according to Gannon, who identified the officer as "very senior" in the department.
