MINNEAPOLIS — The woman who was riding in Daunte Wright’s car when he was pulled over by police testified Thursday about the chaos after he was shot by a suburban Minneapolis officer, telling the jury that she tried to stop his bleeding, but he was just “gasping.”
Albrecht-Payton, who said she had recently started dating Wright, testified that she heard a bang and then noticed the car began moving. Wright’s hands weren’t on the steering wheel and she was “confused,” but his foot was on the gas as their vehicle collided head-on with another car.
Albrecht-Payton, 20, recalled screaming Wright’s name repeatedly after the crash, trying to get him to respond but “he wasn’t answering me.”
Albrecht-Payton’s emotional testimony came during the second day of the trial of Kimberly Potter, a former Brooklyn Center, Minn., police officer, who is charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of Wright, an unarmed 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop.
Wright had been pulled over in the Minneapolis suburb for expired tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. Potter has asserted that she mistakenly pulled her handgun instead of her Taser and fired it, fatally striking Wright.
Wright had been on the phone with his mother, Katie Bryant, when he was shot. Albrecht-Payton testified that she picked up Wright’s cellphone as his mother tried to reconnect with him via FaceTime. Albrecht-Payton answered and told Bryant her son had been shot, and then turned the phone toward Wright’s body.
“I was just screaming, ‘They shot him! They shot him!’ And then I pointed the camera on him, and I’m so sorry I did that,” Albrecht-Payton said, her testimony almost unintelligible as she cried.
Asked by a prosecutor why she was sorry, Albrecht-Payton, her voice shaking, replied, “No mom should have to see that on video call. … I know I hurt her by doing that.”
The fatal encounter occurred when officers discovered during the traffic stop that Wright had an outstanding arrest warrant for a gross misdemeanor weapons violation and tried to arrest him. As Wright struggled with an officer who was trying to handcuff him, Potter, who is White, drew her gun and twice threatened to “Tase” Wright before firing a single shot, striking him in the chest.
Prosecutors say Potter violated her training and betrayed her oath as an officer in the shooting of Wright. An attorney for Potter has countered she made an innocent mistake in a chaotic moment when she feared for the safety of a fellow officer.
Body-camera video shown to jurors Wednesday captured the incident, including Potter’s stunned reaction as she realized she had fired her service pistol. “Holy s--t! I just shot him!” Potter yelled at another officer, according to the video. “I grabbed the wrong f-----g gun. I shot him!”
Squad video played for jurors Wednesday showed Potter collapsing on a sidewalk in shock after the shooting, shrieking and sobbing into her hands. “I’m going to go to prison,” Potter said in the video. “I killed a boy.”
Prosecutors have alleged that Potter “didn’t do anything to help” Wright after she shot him and didn’t inform responding officers about what had happened, including a “small army” of officers who responded to Wright’s crashed car with guns drawn nearly 10 minutes later, delaying medical aid to him.
Much of Thursday’s testimony focused on the chaos after the shooting and included information from responding officers. Prosecutors introduced into evidence body-cam video from Alan Salvosa, a Brooklyn Center officer who was one of the first to respond to the scene and whose dash-cam video captured Wright’s car crashing into another vehicle
Salvosa thought Wright had been fleeing the traffic stop, but he was given no other information about what had happened by Potter or the other officers, including that Wright had been shot by an officer. The video showed Salvosa pointing his gun at the car and screaming at Wright and his passenger to get out.
The video showed Albrecht-Payton eventually exiting the car, with blood running down her face from having slammed into the windshield. She told officers there was no one else but Wright in the vehicle and that he was not breathing, but Salvosa’s body-cam video showed officers debating how to get Wright and possibly others to exit the car. Salvosa testified that they discussed whether they should use less-lethal weapons because they had so little information about who was in the vehicle.
About 10 minutes later, several officers approached the vehicle with a ballistic shield and pulled Wright from the car.
Dan Irish, an officer with the Champlin Police Department who also was one of the first at the scene, testified that Wright was unresponsive when he pulled him from the front seat, and said he could not detect a pulse.
Jurors were shown gruesome video of Irish and other officers trying to revive Wright, his body bloody and limp. After several minutes of chest compressions, a paramedic declared Wright dead, and Irish helped cover his body with a white sheet.
Several jurors appeared disturbed by the video, with one averting her eyes from the television screen where the footage was playing.
Multiple videos presented to the jury Thursday showed officers wandering the scene in confusion, including one who asked Salvosa how Wright was shot. “He’s got a gunshot wound. I didn’t fire it. I have no idea about that,” Salvosa told another officer about 20 minutes after Potter shot Wright.
Salvosa testified that he eventually began to “piece together” there had been an officer-involved shooting, admitting under prosecution questioning that he’d been informed by Wright’s mother that her son had been shot by an officer when he encountered her at the scene. He testified that he did not learn “officially” that Wright had been shot by an officer until about an hour later when he was informed that he was a witness and escorted back to the police station.
Michael Morelock, an ambulance operations supervisor with North Memorial Medical Center, testified that he and another paramedic were called to the scene on a report that three people had been shot. After being cleared into the scene by officers, Morelock said he checked Wright and could not find a pulse. Wright’s skin was “pale or ashen-colored,” he said.
Morelock declared Wright dead at 2:18 p.m. — about 16 minutes after Potter shot him, according to prosecutors.
The case is being heard by a jury of seven men and seven women. The 12 who will deliberate if no alternates are needed include six White men, three White women, two Asian women and one Black woman. The two alternates are a White man and a White woman. The jurors range in age from 20s to 70s.
Potter, who resigned from the force after the shooting, initially was charged with second-degree manslaughter. But in September, prosecutors added a charge of first-degree manslaughter, alleging that Potter had recklessly handled a gun when death was reasonably foreseeable. Neither charge suggests intent, and prosecutors do not have to prove that Potter intended to kill Wright.
Last week, Potter told Hennepin County District Judge Regina Chu, who is overseeing the case, that she will testify in her own defense. If convicted, Potter faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
