TRUE CRIMEFormer Cop Kim Potter Found Guilty Of Manslaughter In Daunte Wright Case
Kim Potter has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Following days of deliberation by a jury of her peers, the former Minnesota police officer was convicted of manslaughter in the death of Daunte Wright on Thursday, December 23.
This comes 8 months after a day on the job turned tragic when Potter allegedly accidentally pulled out her gun instead of her taser, and killed Wright after he attempted to resist arrest during a routine traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minn.
According to bodycam footage, the ex-cop repeatedly insisted to those around her that it was an accident. "Oh my God!" Potter could be heard emotionally crying in the footage. "Holy s–t! I just shot him!" She later collapsed on the side of the road sobbing, "I'm going to prison."
Wright's girlfriend — who was present at the time of the shooting — testified on his traumatic death. "I didn’t know what to do, so I just put my hands over his chest and I just tried to hold it and just started to scream his name," she explained. "I was just trying to have him talk to me and just kept saying, Daunte, like, Daunte, can you say something, please. Talk to me."
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Potter also tearfully pled her case to the court claiming: "I’m sorry it happened … I didn’t want to hurt anybody."
However, the prosecutor was having none of her emotional apologies during the final arguments. "This was a colossal screw-up, a blunder of epic proportions," Erin Eldridge told the jury. "It was precisely the thing she was warned about for years and she was trained to prevent it."
Upon receiving the guilty verdict, her lawyer, Earl Gray, requested she be able to go home and say her goodbyes. "Her bail right now is $100,000, she’s got that posted. She’s not going to run," he argued.
Regardless of Gray's efforts, the former law enforcement officer was immediately cuffed and taken into custody. Hennepin County judge Regina Chu denied his request, noting: "I cannot treat this case any differently than any other case."
Potter faces up to 11 years in prison, and will spend the next month and a half behind bars as she awaits her February 18 sentencing date.
