A 20-year-old African American was killed by a police officer in Brooklyn Center, a town 15 kilometers from Minneapolis, where the trial for the murder of George Floyd is underway in recent weeks, who has become a symbol of the Black Lives Matter protests after he died last May under the knee of agent Derek Chauvin . New protests erupted in front of the local police department and at the scene of the murder, where until late in the evening the victim’s family remained – sitting on the sidewalk, embracing each other, desperate: Daunte Wright, 20, who was in the car with his girlfriend when he was stopped by the agent. According to police reconstructions, the boy had a pending arrest warrant and allegedly tried to re-enter the vehicle to escape while officers attempted to arrest him. At that point a policeman would have fired.
Wright died moments later, after driving a few blocks in the car and crashing into another vehicle. A crowd immediately gathered at the crime scene, including the victim’s mother, Mrs. Kate Wright. It was about 1.40pm, he called to tell me that the police had stopped him because he had gods deodorants hanging from the rearview mirror that blocked vision, and that they were asking him about insurance, Ms. Wright told reporters, explaining that her son was headed for the car wash. I told him to let me speak to the agent, so I could give him the necessary information. Instead I heard the policeman tell him to take off the phone and get out of the car, while Daunte asked why. I heard a fight, and then the agent who told him not to run away, and to put down the phone.
A few moments later Ms. Wright called back Daunte, but her fiancée replied telling her that the officer had shot his son. Once she arrived at the crash site, not even ten minutes later, her mother saw the Buick LaCrosse she had just given the half-destroyed boy and the child’s body covered with a white sheet. The woman asked the officers for explanations – If he was resisting you could use the taser, I don’t understand, she would have said, arguing that the boy was less mature than his age: We treated him like a child – and invited the demonstrators, some of whom were vandalizing police cars, to protest peacefully. We want justice for Daunte, we don’t want violence, he said.
Episodes of violence did however occur in the nearby town of Brooklyn Park, where about twenty shops in the local shopping center were stormed and gunshots were fired in the air and towards the police station. In Brooklyn Center, however, Mayor Mike Elliott asked protesters and officers to remain calm: We call for peaceful protest, and that the demonstration is not faced with force, wrote the mayor on Twitter. The tension increased throughout the day, with the crowd moving past the police department in the evening: hundreds of people who clashed with officers in riot gear, who fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. The Minnesota National Guard also arrived at the scene, already engaged in Minneapolis for the Chauvin trial. Mayor Elliott imposed a curfew in the city and closed all school buildings.
April 12, 2021 (change April 12, 2021 | 10:49)
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