‘I’m sorry it happened’: Ex-police officer apologizes for fatal shooting of Daunte White
Global News
Kim Potter, 49, has said she meant to draw her Taser instead of her handgun during the April 11 traffic stop in Brooklyn Center when she killed Wright.
The Minnesota police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright told jurors at her manslaughter trial on Friday that she “didn’t want to hurt anybody” that day, saying during sometimes tearful testimony that she shouted a warning about using her Taser on Wright after she saw fear in a fellow officer’s face.
Kim Potter, 49, has said she meant to draw her Taser instead of her handgun during the April 11 traffic stop in Brooklyn Center when she killed Wright. She testified that she was “sorry it happened” and that she doesn’t remember what she said or everything that happened after the shooting, saying much of her memory of those moments “is missing.”
Potter is charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of Wright, a 20-year-old Black motorist who was pulled over for having expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. Potter, who was training another officer at the time, said she probably wouldn’t have pulled Wright’s car over if she had been on her own that day because many drivers were late on renewing their tags at that point of the pandemic.
After she and the other two officers at the scene that day decided to arrest Wright on an outstanding warrant for a weapons violation, the encounter “just went chaotic,” Potter told the jury. Wright pulled away from the officers and got back in his car, police body camera footage of the traffic stop shows.
“I remember yelling, `Taser, Taser, Taser,’ and nothing happened, and then he told me I shot him,” Potter said through tears. Her body camera video recorded Wright saying, “Ah, he shot me” an instant after the shooting.
Potter’s attorneys argued that she made a mistake but also would have been justified in using deadly force if she had meant to because one of the other officers, then-Sgt. Mychal Johnson, was at risk of being dragged by Wright’s car.
Johnson testified last week that he was leaning into the car to make sure the gear shifter was in park and to shut off the vehicle, and that he had grabbed Wright’s right arm with both hands to try to handcuff him. He said at the time he couldn’t see what Potter was doing, but began backing out when he heard Potter shout, “Taser!”
Composite video appeared to show Johnson’s hands still in the car at the time the shot was fired.
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