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Minnesota Heats Up Again As Police Kill 20-Year-Old Black Man During George Floyd Trial

Minnesota Heats Up Again As Police Kill 20-Year-Old Black Man During George Floyd Trial

20-Year-Old Black Man
Minnesota Heats Up Again As Police Kill 20-Year-Old Black Man During George Floyd Trial Photo: Men jump on the hood of a police car after a family said a man was shot and killed by law enforcement on April 11, 2021, in Brooklyn Center, Minn. (AP Photo/Christian Monterrosa)

Daunte Wright, 20, was shot and killed by police during an April 11 traffic stop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, just as the city is engaged in the high-profile trial over the police killing George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who has been charged with his murder.

A young father, Wright was in a car with his girlfriend when they were pulled over by the police in a Minneapolis suburb. During the stop, Wright called his mother, Katie Wright, seeking car insurance information to give to the police. He told his mother he was being stopped over dangling air fresheners hanging on the car’s mirror. The next call his mother received was from the girlfriend, telling her that her son had been shot and killed by the police.

Police discovered Wright had a warrant out for his arrest. When they tried to detain Wright, they say he stepped back into his car, at which point an officer shot him, according to police.

Wright’s car then traveled for several blocks and struck another vehicle, after which the police and medical workers pronounced Wright dead, CNN TV reported. Katie Wright told reporters that her son had been driving a car that his family had just given him two weeks ago and that he had called her as he was being pulled over.

“He said they pulled him over because he had air fresheners hanging from his rearview mirror,” she said.

“I heard scuffling and I heard the police officers say, ‘Daunte, don’t run.’ And then the other officer said, ‘Put the phone down,’ and hung it up,” Katie Wright told reporters on Sunday. “And a minute later, I called and his girlfriend answered — that was the passenger — and said that he’d been shot, and she put [the phone] on the driver’s side and my son was laying there lifeless.”

Protests broke out immediately, with crowds following police back to the Brooklyn Center Police Department. Rocks, bags of garbage, and water bottles were thrown at the police, The New York Times reported. Officers fired back at protesters with rubber bullets and chemicals.

Mayor Mike Elliott, the mayor of Brooklyn Center, a city on the northwest border of Minneapolis, ordered a curfew until 6 a.m.

In a statement to ABC News, Wright’s family described him as a young father who “had a whole life ahead of him.”

“We just want people to know Daunte was a good kid,” Wright’s family said in a statement. “He loved being a father to Daunte Jr.”

Twitter exploded with responses from people furious about the continuing police killings of unarmed Black people.”One drop of black is all it takes. We’ll never have equal rights. Police will always shoot to kill us out of fear,” one said. “In other words, he was pulled over for driving while black,” another tweeted.

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Others called for change in policing. “It’s way past time to weed out the trigger happy racist police. People are sick of the constant increase in black deaths by police. It seems the screening of those accepted into the police force is woefully inadequate.”

Comparisons to the George Floyd shooting are inevitable. “Daunte Wright called his mom. George Floyd cried out for his. The helplessness of being a Mother to a Black son who you can’t protect in this this country is maddening.”

Noting the senseless shooting, one person tweeted, “And NOBODY NEEDS TO DIE OVER A FUCKING AIR FRESHER !!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Daunte had a smile to make anyone’s heart melt. He was definitely a jokester, he loved to joke with people, especially his brothers and sisters,” the family added. “He did not deserve this.”

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