Jury convicted Mohamed Noor of third-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter in 2017 death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, unarmed woman who had called 911
A former Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed an unarmed woman who had called 911 said Friday he „knew in an instant I was wrong“ and apologized to her family, just moments before a judge brushed off a defense request for leniency and ordered him to prison for 12 1/2 years. Mohamed Noor was convicted in April of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the July 2017 death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a 40-year-old dual citizen of the U. S. and Australia.
Noor shot Damond when she approached his squad car in the alley behind her home. Noor’s lawyers had argued for a light sentence, saying sending him to prison would only compound the tragedy and keep him from doing service to make amends.
But Judge Kathryn Quaintance sentenced Noor, 33, to a term identical to the recommendation under state guidelines. „The act may have been based on a miscalculation, but it was an intentional act,“ Quaintance said. „Good people sometimes do bad things.“
The case, which sparked outrage in both the U. S. and Australia, has been fraught by race from the start. Noor is Somali American and Damond was white; some in the community argued it was treated differently than police shootings in which the victims were black and the officers were white.
One activist at the courthouse Friday carried a sign that had the words „Black, Muslim, Immigrant and Guilty“ with boxes checked next to each word. Another read, „NOOR: Victim of Identity Politics.“
Noor, his voice breaking several times as he spoke publicly about the shooting for the first time, apologized repeatedly to Damond and her family for „taking the life of a perfect person.
