Daunte Wright was ‘just gasping’ after shooting, girlfriend testifies
MINNEAPOLIS — The woman who was riding with Daunte Wright when he was pulled over by police tearfully testified on Thursday about the chaos right after an officer shot him, saying she screamed at Wright trying to get a response but that he “wasn’t answering me and he was just gasping.”
“I grabbed, like, whatever was in the car. I don’t remember if it was a sweater or a towel or a blanket or something … and put it on his chest like, like you know, you see in movies and TV shows,” Alayna Albrecht-Payton, who was Wright’s girlfriend, testified. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Albrecht-Payton answered Wright’s cellphone as his mother tried frantically to reestablish contact after a call with him was cut off right before he was shot. Wright’s mother, Katie Bryant, testified tearfully on Wednesday that she first saw her son’s apparently lifeless body via that video call.
“I pointed the camera on him,” AlbrechtPayton said. “And I’m so sorry I did that.”
Kim Potter, 49, is charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter in Wright’s April 11 death in Brooklyn Center. The white former officer — she resigned two days after the shooting — has said she meant to use her Taser on the 20-year-old Wright, who was Black, after he attempted to drive away from a traffic stop as officers tried to arrest him, but that she grabbed her handgun instead.
Albrecht-Payton, 20, took the stand on the second day of testimony, after opening statements Wednesday in which prosecutors portrayed Potter as a veteran cop who had been repeatedly trained in Taser use, with warnings about avoiding such deadly mix-ups.
The defense countered that Potter had simply made an error. Attorney Paul Engh also said Wright might have averted tragedy if he had surrendered to Potter and the other officers at the scene.
Defense attorney Earl Gray pressed Albrecht-Payton on Wright’s actions immediately after Potter shot him, in an apparent attempt to show that Wright deliberately tried to drive away even while gravely wounded.
Albrecht-Payton said Wright’s hands “were never on the wheel” and that the car moved away from the scene because his foot was on the gas.
Gray also questioned Albrecht-Payton about the couple’s activities before the traffic stop. She testified that they had smoked marijuana that day.