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Google PlayKim Potter—the former Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright on April 11 during a traffic stop and claims she mistook her gun for a taser—took the stand during her manslaughter trial on Friday.
The 49-year-old testified that she was “sorry it happened,” per ABC 6, and explained that she doesn’t remember much of what she said following the shooting in Brooklyn Center, claiming some of her memory from that day “is missing.”
“We are struggling,” she recalled. “We’re trying to keep him from driving away. It just went chaotic. I remember yelling – ‘Taser, Taser, Taser’ – and nothing happened. And then he told me I shot him.”
Potter faces first and second degree manslaughter charges over the shooting of the 20-year-old Black male who was pulled over for expired license plate tags and an air freshener in his rearview mirror. Potter was training another officer at the time and said she likely wouldn’t have pulled Wright over if she weren’t. She then told the jury that the stop reportedly “just went chaotic” as officers tried to arrest Wright over an outstanding warrant over a weapons violation.
During the trial Friday, prosecutor Erin Eldridge showed an image of the yellow-and-black taser and black gun side-by-side to question the police vet. And when showing the video of Potter shooting Wright, the 20-year-old’s mother reportedly cried, per CNN.
While Potter said she didn’t intend to use deadly force, she reportedly did not mention making a mistake in court Friday, and as ABC 6 shares, she spoke in a seemingly chronological order of events from the day of the shooting. Potter also claimed her department’s officers were not trained on “weapons confusion,” adding she never used her taser on duty, or her gun until she shot and killed Wright.
While prosecutors say they intend to call for longer sentences, a first-degree charge can see over seven years in prison, with four years for a second-degree conviction. Wright’s parents, Aubrey and Katie, spoke with Good Morning America earlier this year about the shooting, discussing their son’s last call to them while he was being pulled over.
“I didn’t hear anything else,” Katie said about the moment police asked him to step out of the vehicle. “I tried to call back three, four times and then the girl that was with him answered the phone and she said that they shot him and he was laying in the driver’s seat unresponsive. And then I heard an officer ask her to hang up the phone again.”
