Bride-to-be called 911 for help, fatally shot

Justine Damond called police after hearing a sound in an alley near the home she shared with her fiancé late Saturday night. But shortly after two officers arrived in her upscale Minneapolis neighborhood to investigate, the call turned deadly when one of the officers shot Damond.

It is unclear why the officer opened fire on Damond, a 40-year-old yoga and meditation teacher from Australia who was supposed to be wed next month, and her death immediately drew renewed scrutiny of police officers in the Twin Cities area for their use of deadly force.

Minneapolis is still reeling from two controversial police-involved shootings that set off waves of heated protests and prompted nationwide calls for officers to wear body cameras. One of the cases in recent weeks again led to rallies and condemnation when an officer who shot a black man during a traffic stop was acquitted.

Damond’s death, one of more than 500 fatal shootings by police in the United States this year, also has raised serious concerns in her home country. News of Damond’s death was splashed across the websites of major news outlets in Australia, where friends, according to media reports, are demanding a federal investigation.

Investigators remained tight-lipped Monday about what happened at 11:30 p.m. Saturday, when police received a 911 call about a possible assault in the alley behind Damond’s home. Her fiance, Don Damond, said Monday that she was reporting “what she believed was an active sexual assault occurring nearby.”

Neither of the responding officers had turned on their body cameras, and police have not yet said why one of the officers shot her. The squad car camera did not capture the incident, either.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), the state agency investigating the shooting, has said only that “at one point,” one of the officers fired a weapon and struck Damond. No weapons were found at the scene.

Investigators are looking into whether other video of the shooting exists, the BCA statement said. When the state investigation is completed, the results will be given to the office of Hennepin County Attorney Michael O. Freeman for review. A spokesman for Freeman declined to comment about the shooting Monday.

All Minneapolis police officers have worn body cameras since the end of 2016, according to the city, a policy decision that was announced last July, after a black motorist named Philando Castile, a local school worker who was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in the Twin Cities area. A dashcam video showed an officer shooting numerous times into Castile’s car but did not show what was happening inside the vehicle; the officer in that case said he believed Castile had been going for a weapon, an account Castile’s girlfriend, who was in the passenger seat, has long disputed.

Authorities said the officers involved in Damond’s shooting have been placed on paid administrative leave.