Potter delivered the fatal shot as Wright sat in the driver's seat after re-entering his car to phone his mother. The car then began to accelerate, collided with another, and hit a concrete barrier. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The mother of his one year old son, who sat beside him in the passenger seat, was immediately taken to the hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries.
Officer Potter maintains she mistakenly shot Daunte with a rifle, when she really only meant to shoot him with an electrical taser gun. Context Map. 4/12/21: ‘They didn’t have to kill him’: anger and outrage as locals mourn Daunte Wright. Amid the drizzle and grey sky on Monday, Bethany Hemrich came to pay her respects near the site where 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot dead less than 24 hours before.
Yellow cordon police tape still dangled from a nearby tree at the intersection of 63rd and Lee Avenue, and Hemrich, who lives a mile away, brought with her flowers and balloons to memorialize the young man who was killed by police on Sunday afternoon. “As a mother of a Black child, I couldn’t even fathom,” Hemrich, who is white, said. “My son is 10, and I brought him to [the] George Floyd memorial and had to explain racism to him.” As her voice broke, she continued: “They didn’t have to kill him. I feel like if it was a white person, they wouldn’t have shot him.” Protests Erupt After Police Kill Man in Brooklyn Center, MN, pt1. 4/13/21: The Shooting of Daunte Wright & the Meaning of George Floyd’s Death.
George Floyd Square, the intersection in Minneapolis where Floyd died, last May, features a mural that says “You Changed the World, George.”
And, in the eleven months since Floyd’s agonizing death, captured on video, we have seen changes ranging from mercenary corporate endorsements of the phrase “Black Lives Matter” to personal reckonings with the role of race in American society as well as substantial legislative and policy changes regarding policing. But for Floyd’s death, New York City would likely not have unsealed the disciplinary records of more than eighty thousand police officers earlier this year.
The biggest question surrounding this raft of changes has been whether it will translate into a decreased likelihood of Black people dying during routine interactions with law enforcement. On Sunday, a twenty-year-old named Daunte Wright was stopped near the intersection of Sixty-third and Lee Avenues in Brooklyn Center, an inner-ring suburb of Minneapolis. 4/14/21: Ben Crump & Rev Al Sharpton hold press conference in NYC following death of Daunte Wright. 4/14/21: Unfathomable that Daunte Wright killed so close to Chauvin trial, says family's lawyer. 4/15/21: The Daunte Wright Shooting- What We Know So Far. Brooklyn Center, MN – On Sunday, April 11, 2021, in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center, former police officer Kim Potter shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright.
After pulling him over for expired tags, Brooklyn Center Police (BCPD) officers on the scene learned that Wright had an active arrest warrant. As police tried to arrest Wright, a struggle ensued which resulted in Potter shooting and killing Wright with a single shot from her standard-issue Glock pistol. Wright’s girlfriend was with him in the passenger seat at the time of the shooting. Untitled. Sam Addresses the Murder of Daunte Wright. 4/16/21: Kimberly A. Potter, Former Officer Who Killed Daunte Wright, Released on Bond. Kimberly Potter, the ex-Brooklyn Center, Minn., police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright, appeared at a court hearing one day after being charged with second-degree manslaughter.
Potter appeared via a virtual conference on Zoom and took issue with her first hearing being broadcast and photographed, a curious complaint given how often the lives of the people cops shoot and kill are interrogated extensively. She is currently out on bail. Minnesota District Judge Paul R. Scoggin reminded her she is not allowed any access to firearms, ammunition or explosives. Her lawyer said she would appear in person for her next hearing in one month. On mistaking a gun that shoots bullets for a gun that shoots electricity.