Daunte Wright: Minnesota police say officer meant to grab taser | USA TODAY

Body cam footage shows the moment 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot by Minnesota police.
RELATED:

The police officer who fatally shot a 20-year-old Black man during a traffic stop may have intended to fire a Taser, the city's police chief said Monday.

The department released dramatic bodycam footage of the incident, which has rocked the Minneapolis suburb miles from where George Floyd was killed during a police arrest last May.

Daunte Wright was shot once and died after the traffic stop Sunday, Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said. Body camera footage released during a news conference shows two other officers approaching Wright's car and the officer who fired the shot standing behind them.

As the officer on the driver side of the vehicle began to handcuff Wright, he broke free, a struggle ensued and Wright jumped back into the driver's seat. An officer threatened to tase him, shouting, "Taser!" before shooting Wright. The car drove away, traveling several blocks before hitting another vehicle.

» Subscribe to USA TODAY:
» Watch more on this and other topics from USA TODAY:
» USA TODAY delivers current local and national news, sports, entertainment, finance, technology, and more through award-winning journalism, photos, videos and VR.

#DaunteWright #Daunte #USATODAY

63 comments

  1. Cops training in the academy has to change and improve that’s how fed’s do it not just anyone gets in

    1. @T J look up lisa mearkle from hummelstown Pennsylvania she shot a man in the back and killed him while he was face down on the ground hands out of his pockets.

      Died over a traffic stop.

    2. @Juan Rodriguez I’m sure you’re perfect…. more of this will happen as more and more “average” people become pieces of garbage… average people are complete narcissistic a hole people…… and they put people into these life and death situations needlessly

    3. They have annual checks and certs to check. And daily training. Personally i think it was a genuine accident. Should it have happened? No. But it seems like an accident

  2. How do u get left and right confused? If you have a hard time remembering left from right or gun from taser then you should not be working In a profession where peoples lives are in your hands.

    1. @Füd

      Have it your way but I advise to comply with the orders to live another day.

      For the record, it is so easy to comply with orders.
      To top it off he had a female in the car and he put her life in danger without doubt.
      Live your life as you choose just keep it out of communities that respect law and order.
      They can stew in the mess they made for all I care

    2. If you haven’t been in a high stress situation then you don’t know but definitely more training needed

    3. they should keep their tasers in a pocket in their vest instead of the sides i feel like this could’ve been prevented

    4. @J Johnson remember he is trying to escape not attack the officer. which means the officer is ill-equipped to do law enforcement work when getting confused in a non threating situation. it also means that if the guy had attacked then she would have tazed him, backwards. she has to be fired.

    5. @Füd

      He had a warrant because he didn’t face justice.

      See the the issue?

      Let me put it this way;
      If he have the music he wouldn’t have a warrant but he ran just like he did on his last day.
      That is called a pattern.

    1. There are videos of White Men grabbing firearm from cops. They didn’t get killed. Another one is a WM chading a cop and he was running in circles. That’s aftet he killed 5 people. They took Dylan Roof to get food because he was hungry. That’s after he killed 9 people. The cops are on code regardless if we comply or not. It doesn’t matter.

    2. @T T you can tell from the lady cops surprise she thought she was really holding a tazer. Cops only human they make mistakes. You know many thousands of police and human interaction takes place in a single day?

    3. @Ron Chu I guess I can make a mistake as well and do one if them in. See how fast you would label me as a thug. Wtf doesn’t know the difference between a taser and firearm? I know more ex cops than you.

    4. @T T My name TT, me know more cops than you (pounds chest). Me know who you know, and you know no cops. Me better. I know who you know. Me know all (peels 🍌).

  3. Clearly need some training under pressure. How the hell do you get them confused. they’re on two different sides, you train, they weigh and hold completely differently.

    1. @E J We get it you’re perfect with which remote you grab…. Netflix n chill or xbox live …. get some hooker, beat her up and steal your money back….. GTA for life….. MOOOOOM bring EJ some CHEEEESY POOOOFS right Meow !!!!1

    2. @Catherine Smith Google won’t give me any specific cases (no surprise) but I found plenty about black men doing it. Also I 100% know black people aren’t the only ones that do it. Just whenever a white man gets beaten or killed by police nobody says anything

    3. @Catherine Smith The attack on Reginald Denny during the 1992 LA riots by 4 black men, which one of them got released and then reincarcetated for murder
      Literally Portland every other night
      David Dorn, ablack 77 year old retired police officer, was killed in the 2020 St Louis riots
      It was reported in October at least 25 people died in the protests, definitely more
      Micah Johnson shot and killed 5 white police officers in 2016
      Literally the hundreds of cops killed every single year.
      You don’t have any evidence of me being wrong about anything I say

  4. Typical criminal behavior by Dante, followed up by incompetent police work culminating in a fatal, accidental, shooting. It’s actually that simple.

    1. @Mountain Dew you are an un intelligent individual. what pressure are you referring? the boy is running away, that is pressure! I know the adrenaline to kill rushes in on these non trained folks who become officers because they need a job.

    2. @Mountain Dew ye and he payed for that but manslaughter is manslaughter. just cause it was an accident doesnt mean they should not be prosecuted.

    3. @חנה Hannah Considering his public defender said that he himself didn’t receive notice of the court date I have to take that as credible

  5. ADC – Accidental Discharge Cases.
    The Ability To Differentiate Between A Taser And A Gun Has Become An Acronym.

  6. Cop was crazy for that. But for real daunte made a bad decision that was stupid to try to run off for a warrant. He traded his life for a few days in jail. Smh

    1. Who are “They”???? I’m hoping you mean criminals in general. Because over the past month there has been multiples mass shootings. Even the school shooting today. The 10hr hostage over the weekend.

    2. @Samara you can add all those people who died in those mass shootings up and I bet there is still more killings in minority communities. But that doesnt fit the narrative so they dont get the same attention.

    3. News came out that they warrant wasn’t his. They confused his address with some else. He actually didn’t have a warrant !!!

  7. Resising arrest is a big deal and I hate how its often seen a a totally ok thing to do. In America you don’t settle mistreatment from a police officer in the streets in the moment, you do it in a court room. The police officer had no excuse for firing his weapon at the man trying to flee. But just keep in mind, this is why you don’t defund police, you better train them. Also the officer has a family to go home to every night I know for a fact that being in that situation in real life is much more scary and hard to see clearly than replaying camera footage from the comfort of your home. Not sticking up for the officer, just because he’s making a mistake doesn’t mean we need to burn and throw out the whole system.

    1. i don’t know the situation but i feel like the fact that police have killed so many people “accidentally” instantly puts fear especially in black people and this causes them to resist because it seems like no matter what you do they will kill you resisting or not resisting at all and it causes tension on both sides

    2. @Killin “so he was resisting arrest ” exactly the mentality that will get you pumped full of lead.. good luck with that, killin.

  8. Oh wow How long has she been an officer ? Is it her first day ? Or maybe you guys are so used to drawing your guns it was muscle memory

  9. I got this from another post… but this is like a paramedic treating a patient over dosing who is also actively resisting help .. and giving them fentanyl instead of narcan because you were under pressure and calling it a “mistake”

    1. You do understand the cop is human ? We make mistakes, especially when someone you are trying to arrest escapes being handcuffed and tries to drive away

    2. @We Are The Gamers it’s more of when officers get dragged by a vehicle it has killed some of them..agreed

    3. @We Are The Gamers of course people/cops make mistakes. However, cops can make a mistake in pulling over the wrong car when looking for a shooting suspect. Make a mistake in one of their reports . Not mistake a gun for a taser. In that profession you literally cannot make that mistake .. plain and simple. It wouldn’t have been as bad if she had her pistol in her hand and just wouldn’t have shot

  10. The officer should know what weapon to grab. That kid shoulda just chilled, and we wouldn’t be talking about this.

  11. Over and over, unrest, this will cause the future of high-tech strong robot cops that don’t care about an ethnicity but truth, robot drone billboards that can flash ‘ no air freshener dangling allowed please’ programmed to know all and how-to everything to prevent unnecessary death and allow the courts to handle individual cases.

  12. Another case of resisting arrest. It’s puzzling how someone on the force that long could make such a rookie mistake though.

  13. I live In Minnesota the cops really are dumb bricks…

    A cop tried to give me a ticket for a blunt I was smoking in my car in front of my apartment. Lol I had to educate them. & they left.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.