A suburb of Minneapolis was under curfew early yesterday after US police fatally shot a young black man, sparking protests not far from where a former police officer was on trial for the murder of George Floyd.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the police station in Brooklyn Center, northwest of Minneapolis, with police later firing tear gas and flash bangs to disperse the crowd, a video journalist reported.
By about midnight, the National Guard was on the scene and Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott imposed a curfew from 1am until 6am yesterday morning.
Photo: AFP
“We want to make sure everyone is safe,” Elliott wrote on Twitter. “Please be safe and please go home.”
The mother of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man, told a crowd on Sunday evening that he called her to say he had been pulled over by police, local media reported.
Katie Wright said she heard officers tell her son to put his phone down and then one of the officers ended the call. Soon after, her son’s girlfriend told her he had been shot.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension confirmed it was “investigating an officer-involved shooting incident” in Brooklyn Center, but declined to identify the victim.
Officers pulled over a driver for a traffic offense, a statement from the Brooklyn Center Police Department said.
When they discovered he had an outstanding warrant, they tried to take him into custody. He got back into his vehicle and one of the officers fired their weapon, striking the driver, who died at the scene, it said.
A female passenger in the vehicle suffered “non-life threatening injuries” and was transported to a hospital, said the statement, which did not identify the woman.
Photographs from the protest showed men stomping on the windshield of a police cruiser. Police fired rubber bullets to try to disperse the protesters, the Star Tribune reported.
After about an hour, the police presence eased, and the crowd lit candles and wrote messages such as “Justice for Daunte Wright” in chalk on the street.
However, clashes broke out again soon after as another group of several hundred protesters gathered outside the Brooklyn Center Police Headquarters, and were met with tear gas and flash bangs.
Minnesota Commissioner of Public Safety John Harrington told a news conference of “rocks and other objects thrown at the police department.”
He said that officers were sent to the scene and the crowd had mostly dispersed.
About 20 businesses were looted at a local mall, he added.
Harrington said more National Guard troops would be moved to the area yesterday to deal with potential unrest.
The shooting comes during the ongoing trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is facing charges of manslaughter and murder over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May last year.
Elliott called the shooting “tragic,” while Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said the state “mourns another life of a black man taken by law enforcement.”
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