Former police officer Kim Potter was found guilty of the murder of 20-year-old African American Daunte Wright, who was killed on April 21, 2021 in Minneapolis. After 27 hours in the council chamber, the jury found the former police officer guilty, who now faces decades in prison. Present in the courtroom, Potter remained impassive in hearing the verdict, then she was handcuffed and taken away. A very different behavior from the mangled tears of his last testimony before the court, when the former agent burst into tears relentlessly for what he has repeatedly called a tragic mistake, which is to have confused the service pistol with the taser.
The sentence
Potter was found by the jury (but only 12 jurors decided to deliver a verdict) guilty on both counts, first and second degree murder, for which she faces up to 10 and 15 years in prison respectively. The conviction for the former agent, 49, is expected in the coming weeks. After having listened to 33 witnesses in three weeks of trial, the thesis of the prosecution which has focused on the gross negligence of the former agent despite his training with firearms has passed. “The judicial system has offered some form of justice for a meaningless death,” says Daunte Wright’s family lawyer.
The death of Daunte Wright
Twenty-year-old American Daunte Wright was killed on April 21, 2021 in Minneapolis: agents had stopped him behind the wheel because he had an expired license plate and because he had in his car, despite it being illegal, an Arbre Magique attached to the rearview mirror. After they approached the car and discovered that Wright had an arrest warrant for possession of an unlicensed weapon, the officers tried to arrest him. Wright objected and tried to escape from one of the policemen who tried to handcuff him. So Potter pulled out what he thought was the taser, shouting “Taser, taser” before opening fire. What he had in hand, however, was not the taser but the service pistol: the shot from the weapon hit Wright in the chest, killing him. Once the Potter mistake was realized – it emerges from the videos – she screamed and threw herself on the ground. “I’m going to jail. I killed a boy,” he said. “Anyone can make mistakes. No one is perfect. This woman made a mistake and a mistake is not a crime,” Potter’s lawyers repeated in court. But the thesis did not pass and the former agent will spend Christmas in jail awaiting the final sentence of the judge.
Source-tg24.sky.it