Another black man shot dead by US police officer
BROOKLYN CENTRE, Minneapolis. — Protests erupted against police when an officer fatally shot a young black man after stopping his vehicle for a traffic violation on Sunday about 16km from where George Floyd was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis in May 2020.
The death sparked protests in Brooklyn Centre into the early hours of yesterday morning, and stores were broken into, as Minneapolis was already on edge and midway through the trial of the first of four police officers in George Floyd’s death.
The man killed by police was identified by relatives and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as Daunte Wright, 20.
Walz said in a statement that he was monitoring the unrest in Brooklyn Centre, a suburb of Minneapolis, as “our state mourns another life of a black man taken by law enforcement.”
Anti-police protesters have already spent recent days rallying in Minneapolis as the trial of Derek Chauvin, a white former city policeman, enters the third week in a courthouse ringed with barriers and soldiers from the National Guard.
Chauvin is charged with murder and manslaughter for kneeling on the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man in handcuffs, during the deadly arrest in May 2020, video of which sparked global protests against police brutality.
Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, told reporters at the scene that she received a call from her son on Sunday afternoon telling her that police had pulled him over for having air fresheners dangling from his rear-view mirror, illegal in Minnesota. She could hear police tell her son to get out the vehicle, she said.
Some protesters who gathered near the scene waved flags and signs reading “Black Lives Matter.” Others walked peacefully with their hands held up.