The former officer, Mohamed Noor, fired a single shot that killed Justine Ruszczyk in 2017. She had been calling the police, reporting that she heard screaming.<\/b>
\nJurors in Minneapolis convicted a former police officer of murder on Tuesday in the 2017 shooting death of an unarmed woman, The Associated Press reported. Rarely do police shootings result in such convictions.
The shooting of Justine Ruszczyk, 40, set off outrage as far away as Australia, where Ms. Ruszczyk had lived for most of her life, and forced changes in the policies and leadership of the Minneapolis Police Department. The trial drew intense attention among Minnesota\u2019s Somali-American residents, many of whom wondered whether the former officer involved, Mohamed Noor, who was born in Somalia, would be treated fairly.
From the start, the case had been a mystery. Mr. Noor, who was later fired by the Police Department, declined to speak with investigators about why he opened fire a few minutes before midnight on July 15,2017. At trial, Mr. Noor, speaking publicly about the shooting for the first time, said he feared for his life when he saw Ms. Ruszczyk approaching his cruiser and made a split-second decision to shoot.
\u201cI fired one shot,\u201d Mr. Noor said in court, according to The Star Tribune newspaper. \u201cThe threat was gone. She could have had a weapon.\u201d
Prosecutors said Mr. Noor, 33, acted unreasonably \u2014 firing at a shadowy figure without a verbal warning \u2014 and that he should be convicted of murder.
\u201cJustine was approaching the car unarmed. They couldn\u2019t even tell whether it was a male or a female, an adult or a child,\u201d said Mike Freeman, Hennepin County\u2019s elected prosecutor, when charges were filed last year. \u201cWhat is the threat that requires the use of deadly force? What was the serious crime that was going on?\u201d
Ms. Ruszczyk had called 911 twice that night to report what she thought was a sexual assault in the alley behind her home. Peter Wold, a lawyer for Mr. Noor, acknowledged that Ms. Ruszczyk, who was about to get married and sometimes used her fianc\u00e9\u2019s surname, Damond, had in fact posed no threat. She had been holding a glittery cellphone and standing outside a rolled-down window of the squad car when she was shot.
Mr. Wold said it was a tragedy, but not a crime.
\u201cSometimes your job has negative and unintended consequences,\u201d Mr. Wold told jurors, who heard arguments throughout April at a downtown Minneapolis courthouse. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what happened in that narrow and dark alley in those split seconds.\u201d
American police officers have wide discretion to use lethal force, and few are ever charged in on-duty shootings. Of those who stand trial, many are acquitted, though there have been recent exceptions in Illinois, Florida and Texas.
In Minnesota, Ms. Ruszczyk\u2019s death stoked outrage and reinvigorated debate about how officers use force \u2014 a familiar topic following protests over the deadly police shootings of Jamar Clark and Philando Castile. In Ms. Ruszczyk\u2019s neighborhood, a safe, affluent area near the southwest corner of Minneapolis, the shooting has harmed relations with the police.
\u201cPeople\u2019s willingness to interact with police officers has taken a decline,\u201d said Todd Schuman, who lives near the shooting scene and is part of group calling for Mr. Noor to be convicted. \u201cI have two children here, and how I talk to them about their interactions with police officers is going to change as a result of this.\u201d
After Ms. Ruszczyk\u2019s death, the Minneapolis police chief was forced out, and the mayor was voted out of office. The Police Department also revamped its body camera policy: Both Mr. Noor and his partner, Officer Matthew Harrity, had been wearing cameras that night, but neither officer had them turned on at the time of the shooting.
In some ways, the case was an outlier. While much of the national debate about police shootings had focused on young, African-American men being killed by white officers, Ms. Ruszczyk was a white woman, and Mr. Noor is Somali-American. During the trial, Mr. Noor\u2019s lawyers detailed his journey from a farm in Somalia to a refugee camp in Kenya to a new home in Minneapolis.
Since the shooting, some activists and members of Minnesota\u2019s large Somali community have questioned whether Mr. Noor was treated differently by prosecutors than a white officer would have been.
\u201cEverybody\u2019s very nervous and following this case very closely,\u201d said Omar Jamal, a Somali-American activist and consultant, before the verdict. \u201cThey feel a sense of him being targeted.\u201d
Ms. Ruszczyk, a meditation coach and a dual citizen of Australia and the United States, had made her own journey to Minneapolis. She moved to the city a couple of years before the shooting to live with her fianc\u00e9 and had been building a small business. When she called 911 that night, her wedding was just weeks away.<\/p>\n