By Nathan Layne
(Reuters) -Kimberly Potter, the white former Minnesota police officer who killed Black motorist Daunte Wright in April after claiming she mistook her handgun for her Taser, testified on Friday that she feared for another officer’s safety when she drew her weapon.
Potter, 49, has pleaded not guilty to first- and second-degree manslaughter charges, which carry maximum sentences of 15 and 10 years respectively. Her lawyers have said that Potter thought she was drawing her stun gun when she shot Wright in the chest with her Glock handgun during a traffic stop in April.
Potter and another police officer pulled Wright over because there was an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror and his license plate tabs were expired. They then learned of an outstanding warrant for his arrest on a misdemeanor weapons charge and sought to detain him, which Wright resisted.
Potter can be heard shouting, “taser, taser, taser,” on her body-worn camera before firing into Wright’s vehicle as he broke free from a second officer and tried to drive away. A third officer, Sgt. Mychal Johnson, had entered through the passenger side of the car to assist with the arrest.
Under questioning from her lawyer, Potter broke down in tears as she described the events that preceded the shooting. She said she saw Johnson struggling with Wright over the gear shift with “a look of fear on his face.”
“We were trying to keep him from driving away. It just went chaotic,” Potter testified. “And then I remember yelling ‘taser taser taser’ and nothing happened and then he (Wright) told me I shot him.”
The testimony underscored a core strategy of the defense. Throughout the trial, Potter’s attorneys have sought to portray the situation as dangerous for the officers, with Johnson at risk of being dragged down the street if Wright were allowed to drive away. They have argued that Potter was justified in using force even if she drew the wrong weapon.
Prosecutors rested their case on Thursday after a week of witness testimony aimed in large part at establishing the extensive training received by Potter, which they argued made her criminally culpable in the death of the 20-year-old Wright.
Potter was a police officer in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center for 26 years prior to the shooting, which triggered several nights of protests, with critics calling it another example of police violence against Black Americans.
The incident occurred just a few miles north of where Derek Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis police officer, was at the same time standing trial https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jurors-resume-deliberations-derek-chauvin-murder-trial-2021-04-20 in the case of George Floyd, a Black man whose 2020 death during an arrest set off racial justice protests in many U.S. cities. Chauvin was convicted of murder.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Editing by Mark Porter)
