Mystery around police shooting of Justine Damond in Minneapolis
DW—Relatives and neighbours of Australian Justine Damond shot dead by Minneapolis police over the weekend want answers. The woman was killed by an officer as she stood in her pajamas in an alley next to her home.
The victim’s fiancé, Don Damond, told reporters on Monday that the family was being “kept in the dark” by law enforcement about what happened on Saturday night when Justine Damond was killed.
“We’ve lost the dearest of people and we are desperate for information. Piecing together Justine’s last moments before the homicide would be a small comfort as we grieve this tragedy,” Damond said.
A Minneapolis police statement released on Monday said two officers responded to a call of a“possible assault.”
“At one point, an officer fired their weapon, fatally striking a woman,” the statement read.
The officers’ body cameras “were not turned on at the time,” and the car-mounted camera did not capture the shooting, the police added.
Damond told reporters on Monday that 40-year-old Justine had called 911 to report what she believed was a sexual assault in an alley near her home in the middle-class neighborhood of Fulton in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The StarTribune - citing three people with knowledge of the shooting it did not name - said officers pulled into the alley in a squad car and Damond talked to the driver.The newspaper’s sources said the officer in the passenger seat shot Damond through the driver’s-side door, while Damond was in her pajamas.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office on Monday night said the woman died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Investigation ongoing
There are no known witnesses other than the two officers in the squad car and almost two days after her death, police had offered no public explanation, referring questions to the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), which is investigating.
Minneapolis Police Chief Janee Harteau said on Monday the death was“tragic,” adding that she has“many of the same questions” as Damond’s family and community members are asking about the shooting.
She said she had immediately asked for an outside investigation.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman will decide whether either officer should be charged.
The BCA said Monday that no weapons were found at the scene. Officials said the officers’ body cameras were not turned on and that a squad car camera did not capture the shooting. Investigators were still trying to determine whether other video exists.
The shooter
Authorities haven’t identified the officers involved yet, although WCCO-TV, citing policeman Mohamed Noor’s attorney Tom Plunkett, identified the officer who fired his weapon as Noor.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune and KSTP-TV, citing unidentified sources, also identified the officer as Noor, a Somali-American. A city newsletter said he joined the police department in March 2015.
Noor was reportedly sued after a May 25 incident in which he and other officers took a woman to hospital on a mental health hold.Television station KSTP reported that city records show Noor had three complaints on file.
Last year, 32-year-old Philando Castile was killed by an officer during a traffic stop in a nearby suburb, and in November 2015 a Minneapolis police officer shot and killed Jamar Clark during a struggle in which, according to the officer, Clark grabbed his partner’s weapon.