Daunte Wright shooting: Ex-Officer Kim Potter makes first court appearance

MINNEAPOLIS — Former Brooklyn Center police Officer Kim Potter made her first court appearance Thursday after being charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of Daunte Wright, 20.

>> Read more trending news

Her attorney, Earl Gray, declined a reading of the complaint during the short appearance Thursday, KMSP-TV and KARE reported. Potter is expected to be in court for her next appearance May 17.

Officials with Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation arrested Potter on a second-degree manslaughter charge Wednesday morning.

On Monday, then-Brooklyn Center police Chief Tim Gannon said Potter appeared to have confused her gun for her Taser gun on Sunday. She fired a single shot, killing Wright. Both Gannon and Potter resigned from their posts on Tuesday.

In a criminal complaint filed in court, authorities said Porter was acting as a field training officer for another officer when they stopped a white Buick driven by Wright. Gannon said that the car was initially stopped for expired tags.

Police learned Wright was wanted on a misdemeanor warrant and attempted to arrest him. At one point, he managed to get back into the driver’s seat of the Buick, and Potter pulled out her gun. She yelled “Taser” several times, an apparent indication that she was preparing to stun Wright. Instead, she shot him with her handgun.

>> Read the criminal complaint filed in Minnesota

“(Expletive), I just shot him!” Potter could be heard saying on body camera footage of the incident shared by police on Monday.

Wright’s family has called for Potter to face the maximum possible charge in the 20-year-old’s death.

“There’s never going to be justice to us,” Katie Wright, Daunte Wright’s mother, said at a news conference earlier Thursday. “We’re still going to bury our son.”

Daunte Wright’s sister, 14-year-old Destiny Wright, remembered her brother as “the most delightful person” she’d ever met.

“He was just… He was everything,” she said.

His father, Aubrey Wright, said his son didn’t deserve to die in the way he did.

“My son was a good young man,” Aubrey Wright said. “He was young man in the making. We were building my son up to be somebody. He was going to be somebody. He was a good kid.”

>> Related: Derek Chauvin trial: Former Minneapolis officer accused of killing George Floyd declines to testify

Daunte Wright’s death sparked days of protests in the Minneapolis area amid the ongoing trial of Derek Chauvin. The former Minneapolis police officer faces murder and manslaughter charges in the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a 43-year-old Black man who was approached by police on suspicion of using a fraudulent $20 bill at a convenience store.

Cox Media Group