‘I didn’t want to hurt anybody’: Weeping Kim Potter apologizes for fatally shooting Daunte Wright as she breaks down in tears on the witness stand and says ‘we were struggling, we were trying to keep him from driving away’
- Kim Potter took the stand in her trial Friday, hoping to persuade jurors to acquit her of manslaughter charges in what she has claimed was a gun-Taser mix up
- She wept as she recalled how the April 11 traffic stop turned ‘chaotic’ and ended with her pulling her gun and fatally shooting Daunte Wright, 20
- ‘We were trying to keep him from driving away. It just went chaotic. I remember yelling, ‘Taser! Taser! Taser!’ and nothing happened,’ she told the court
- ‘And then he told me I shot him,’ she added before breaking down in sobs
- Potter said it was her trainee, Officer Luckey who initiated the stop having seen an air-freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror and noting expired tags
- When asked if she would have made the call to pull Wright over for such an offense if she was working alone, Potter replied: ‘Most likely not’
- Before Potter’s testimony, clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Laurence Miller testified what mechanisms were at play in the cop’s mind during the shooting
- Miller told the court Potter’s fatal mistake was an ‘action error’ – a recognized hazard of high-pressure jobs and situations
- Prosecutors have to prove recklessness or culpable negligence in order to win a conviction on the manslaughter charges
Ex-cop Kim Potter broke down and wept on the witness stand at her trial as she re-lived the moment she yelled ‘Taser! Taser! Taser!’ and shot Daunte Wright dead.
Taking the stand Friday Potter recalled how the April 11 traffic stop devolved into ‘chaos’ and ended with her grabbing her gun and fatally shooting the 20-year-old.
Her voice shaking and catching she said: ‘We were struggling, we were trying to keep him from driving away. It just went chaotic.
‘And then I remember yelling, ‘Taser! Taser! Taser!’ and nothing happened….and then, he told me I shot him.’
As she uttered the words Potter, 49, put her hands over her face and wept.
In the moments leading up to the shooting, she recalled, both her trainee Officer Anthony Luckey and Sergeant Mychal Johnson who arrived to provide back-up had told Wright that he was under arrest.
