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.
