A United States police officer has shot and killed a 20-year-old Black man, named Daunte Wright, after stopping his vehicle for a traffic violation in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Sunday.
According to media reports, protests erupted after the incident which met with teargas and rubber bullets fired by the police.
Meanwhile, the Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, stated that he was closely monitoring the situation. “Gwen (Tim’s wife) and I are praying for Daunte Wright’s family as our state mourns another life of a Black man taken by law enforcement,” the governor wrote on Twitter.
According to Rueters: “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.”
“I heard scuffling, and I heard police officers say, ‘Daunte, don’t run,’” she continued until the call had ended. She redialed his number which was now picked up by Wright’s girlfriend who told the mother that his son was now dead in the driver’s seat.
It is very important to note that the Sunday’s incident took place about 10 miles (16 km) from the place where another Black man George Floyd was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis in May, 2020.
