Kim Potter, 49, has been convicted of involuntary homicide during his trial in December. During a difficult police check, she killed Daunte Wright, 20 years old, claiming having confused her service weapon with her taser.
Le Monde with AFP
She had been convicted of involuntary homicide during her trial in December, Kim Potter was sentenced on Friday, February 18, two years in prison. The 49-year-old policemen killed in April 2021, a young African American motorist, claiming to confuse his service weapon with his Taser electric pistol.
The facts had occurred during a banal road control in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Daunte Wright, 20, had resisted his arrest in Brooklyn Center. The death of Mr. Wright had moved the United States, because he had been killed at the time of the police trial Derek Chauvin who, in May 2020 in Minneapolis, has asphyxied the Black Quadmenaire George Floyd.
The police officer “made a tragic error” when she carried out a legal arrest, “said the judge, Regina Chu, to justify the clemency of the sentence. “She never intended to hurt,” added the judge. Kim Potter can leave prison after sixteen months, and will purge the rest of his sentence on parole.
The family demanded “the most severe sentence possible”
At the helm, the prosecutor, Matt Frank, had demanded a little more than seven years in prison for this police officer every twenty-six years of a career previously without hooking. On the contrary, the family of Daunte Wright claimed “the most severe possible pain” for Kim Potter, considering that she was guilty of murder. “Kim Potter killed my son and he died on the 11th of April. Today, justice killed him again,” reacted the mother of Daunt Wright, Katie Wright.
“I was wrong, it hurts me and I am very angry,” added her husband, Arbuey Wright, believing that the former police officer had received “only a tape on his hand”. The family lawyer, Ben Crump, who also represented the relatives of George Floyd, for his name denounced “black and white justice”. “We have tried to encourage [the family] to believe that there was fair justice in America, but with sentences like this, it’s hard to convince them,” he said. ” / P>
The former police lawyer, Paul Engh, pleaded for a suspended sentence with regard to his exemplary states, his remorse expressed at trial and considering that it was “not a risk for the society “. “It was an accident, a mistake,” he said, saying that Daunt Wright had acted “aggressively” to his arrest as he was under a mandate.
“I’m so sorry to have done you so much”, repeated at the Kim Potter hearing at the young driver’s family, hoping that it “will one day find a way of Forgive because hate destroys us all “. On April 11, 2021, the police and a colleague had decided to control the driver of a car for a minor road offense. After realizing that he was targeted by an arrest warrant, they had decided to challenge him. During his trial in December, she described a “potentially dangerous” situation.
The young man, who was not armed, did not let the handcuffs pass and restarted his car to flee. Kim Potter had so tasted what she said to think of being her electric pistol. She had drawn a single shot, mortally wounding Daunte Wright. Enamelled gatherings of violence had taken place several nights immediately in Brooklyn Center before the arrest of Kim Potter does not bring calm.