“This appears to me, from what I viewed and the officers’ reaction and distress immediately after, that this was an accidental discharge that resulted in the tragic death of Mr. Wright.”
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 gun instead of her Taser during a struggle following a traffic stop, the city’s police chief said on Monday. The shooting on Sunday of Daunte Wright triggered unrest in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse angry protesters who kept to the streets into the early Monday morning hours. The attempted arrest of Wright, who police say was stopped due to an expired car registration, occurred not far from where the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former white Minneapolis police officer charged with murdering George Floyd, is taking place. Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon told a news briefing on Monday that the routine traffic stop escalated into a deadly shooting when officers ran a check on Wright and found an outstanding warrant for him. Video footage presented at the briefing showed an officer trying to handcuff Wright next to the car, before he breaks free and gets back inside the car.
