A Brooklyn Center police officer fatally shot a man during a traffic stop Sunday afternoon, inflaming already raw tensions between police and activists in the midst of the Derek Chauvin trial.
Relatives of Daunte Wright, 20, who is Black, told a tense crowd gathered at the scene in the northern Minneapolis suburb that Wright drove for a short distance after he was shot, crashed his car, and died at the scene.
Wright was identified by family members, not by authorities.
According to Brooklyn Center police, officers pulled over a vehicle for a traffic violation shortly before 2 p.m. on the 6300 block of Orchard Ave.
The driver, who had a warrant, got back into the vehicle as officers were trying to take him into custody. That’s when an officer discharged a weapon, striking the driver, police said. The vehicle traveled several blocks before crashing into another vehicle.
Officers and medical personnel performed lifesaving measures but the driver was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. A female passenger was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Wright’s family had said earlier that he was shot in Plymouth but he was not.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was on the scene and will conduct an independent investigation.
Brooklyn Center officers wear body cameras and the Police Department said Sunday that it believes the body cameras and dash cameras were on during the incident.
By Sunday night, a couple hundred people had gathered near the scene.
Protesters pushed past police tape and confronted officers donning riot gear. Around 7:15 p.m., the crowd broke the windshields of two squad cars and police fired non lethal rounds to try to disperse the crowd.
But by 8:30 p.m., police presence eased and the remaining crowd calmly gathered to light candles, burn sage and write messages like “Justice for Daunte Wright” in chalk on the street near the scene.
Earlier in the evening, Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, tearfully pleaded near the scene for more information and for her son’s body to be moved from the street. She also urged the protesters to remain peaceful.
“Now he’s dead on the ground since 1:47…Nobody will tell us anything,” she said. “Nobody will talk to us…I said please take my son off the ground.”
A woman who lives near the crash scene, Carolyn Hanson, said she saw officers pull a man out of a car and perform CPR. A passenger who got out of the vehicle was covered in blood, she said.
The death comes during the ongoing trial of Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd in south Minneapolis in May 2020. Floyd’s death sparked days of violent demonstrations in Minneapolis and across the country. The trial, which is being livestreamed, has drawn international attention during a time of intense scrutiny of policing.
[email protected] • 612-673-4440
[email protected] • 612-673-4751
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